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At this time, the amount of inventory is so low it's pathetic. My February 2010 report showed inventory hovering just above February 2006. Peak inventory was in July 2007. There are buyers sitting on the sidelines ready to buy (self included). Homes that were passed over the first time are now getting second and third looks. I'm searching through withdrawn and expired listings looking for qualified properties.
For shadow inventory, is everyone just repeating media speculation or is it reality? Since Florida is a disclosure state, go to the clerk's website and search for deed transfers to your favorite bank; go to the county Property Appraiser website and search by bank name. It's just not there. Are the banks delaying foreclosure? I wish I knew.
Recently, a bank-owned townhouse in good condition came on the market. A buyer I was working with liked it and made a full price offer without delay. On the market two days and 30 days to close. The townhouse also appraised for $13,000 more than the contract price. Welcome to the new normal.
Being a realist, I don't play the speculation game or predict the future. If I had any idea what would happen next, I would have prevented the mess we're in now.
this kind of info really frustrates me. not because i think you are wrong, it's just that i no longer trust stats coming out of anywhere. everything is so wildly distorted by adjustments for this, that and the next it's hard to rely on any data.
i don't know where you get inventory numbers from but what i see are loads of vacant homes. more than likely it's more reliable than my info but i check the county foreclosure auctions and on average, 4 days a week, they get through between 50 and 100 homes. on average about 5 sell everyday and the rest are returned to the banks. so call it what you want, from what i can see the banks are getting around 250 homes next week (verified on the clerk's foreclosure site). to me that means that they have to offload around 1000 homes a month just to keep up. then there is the backlog from last year and the year before when they were getting 500 a week.
i want to believe you it's just there's so much stuff just standing empty, so many people out of work, so many shops closing down i just don't see what is supporting this.
i agree with you that you can reasonably assume the general position of the regions inhabitants with this info, particularly the percentage of homeowners who are mortgage free. i think that this could potentially be very useful. what do you do though, do you put every address within a certain distance from your home and check their mortgage info? perhaps that's a bit of an overkill but if every buyer did this type of homework we wouldn't be in this mess.
(still wouldn't refer to an optimistic debtor as a thief though unless they lied about their income in which case they should be charged with fraud and the bank should be charged with criminal neglegence)
Ya, well, it might be overkill but I do almost that much work when I'm just buying a shirt. I consider it part of my financial responsibility. And so yes, I'll be checking every single property within what I consider to be my neighborhood for this level of investment. When I bought my first property there I checked only the ones I considered to be extremely comparable but even at that I'm sure many would have considered my efforts overkill.
Both for the Tampa property I recently purchased and on the south Florida one I've still got, I consider an area of about 300 houses (it just turned out that way in both places) within certain parameters which I define by knowing an area. These are often determined by major roads, districts, subdivisions, etc. The last house I sold was much more defined by type of housing, however, as it was waterfront and so such a district would run linearly along the intracoastal through various neighborhoods. Were I buying there, I would check various neighborhoods among those which most closely matched.
I also find striking the free & clear properties which for me lends to the stability of a place and makes me more confortable with the percentage of properties I consider scarily financed. Where I selected in Tampa are very long-term residents where many properties rarely come up for sale. I am only the second owner of the houses I bought there and I've currently no intent to sell in my lifetime.
I think very funny your term "optimistic debtor' but in all seriousness I do not have much sympathy for what I consider to be irresponsible borrowing and as liberal as I am, I do not know if I would object to debtor jails. I spent a lot of years watching my friends enjoy all the things I could not afford. Thing is, I knew they could not afford them either. And I am not happy that because I saved instead of borrowed, that through taxation and inflation, I will be the one to pay for their stolen pleasures.
^^With all your leg work, can you still tell me how much your neighbor is owing (or the balance)? If you say you know how to come to that figure, I will still call it speculation.
But I am not denying the importance of the leg work you did as a general guideline for an area. You are just over-stating it by claiming some of the people are in the brink of collapse--you don't also have info in their income, do you?
With all that leg work, yes, I can tell you which of my neighbors is more likely to be in trouble and which are more likely to not be in trouble. From that I can get an idea of by what percentage the neighborhood seems safe. The more safe, the less speculative. You are free to call that whatever you want.
I don't know where you got your wording "brink of collapse" as I don't see that in anything I wrote.
The paragraph you might be referring to that:
I found 27% owned free & clear; 12% have been ATM'd to death or are deeply underwater and in danger of future foreclosure whether or not preceedings have yet begun; 15% could get themselves in trouble if their luck does not hold out; and 46% are financed well with fixed mortgages by financially responsible people who have not destroyed their own equity.
discusses the possiblities of each catagory but makes no declarative statement as to what will absolutely will be their futures. Just what do you find untrue about the statement that someone who has ATM'd a house to death could be in "danger of future foreclosure" or that others (I did not specify but in part referred to teaser loans) "could get themselves in trouble"?
I really think you are just picking at a scab. I do not see any other point of your criticism.
Ya, well, it might be overkill but I do almost that much work when I'm just buying a shirt. I consider it part of my financial responsibility. And so yes, I'll be checking every single property within what I consider to be my neighborhood for this level of investment. When I bought my first property there I checked only the ones I considered to be extremely comparable but even at that I'm sure many would have considered my efforts overkill.
Both for the Tampa property I recently purchased and on the south Florida one I've still got, I consider an area of about 300 houses (it just turned out that way in both places) within certain parameters which I define by knowing an area. These are often determined by major roads, districts, subdivisions, etc. The last house I sold was much more defined by type of housing, however, as it was waterfront and so such a district would run linearly along the intracoastal through various neighborhoods. Were I buying there, I would check various neighborhoods among those which most closely matched.
I also find striking the free & clear properties which for me lends to the stability of a place and makes me more confortable with the percentage of properties I consider scarily financed. Where I selected in Tampa are very long-term residents where many properties rarely come up for sale. I am only the second owner of the houses I bought there and I've currently no intent to sell in my lifetime.
I think very funny your term "optimistic debtor' but in all seriousness I do not have much sympathy for what I consider to be irresponsible borrowing and as liberal as I am, I do not know if I would object to debtor jails. I spent a lot of years watching my friends enjoy all the things I could not afford. Thing is, I knew they could not afford them either. And I am not happy that because I saved instead of borrowed, that through taxation and inflation, I will be the one to pay for their stolen pleasures.
seems as though we have a lot in common then as i'm prone to overkill myself. as such my research is telling me to hold out, though i'm tired of rentals and the endless search for the bottom is getting tiresome. i agree that it was irritating to watch all my buds get new cars, boats, bikes etc when i knew they were putting themselves under huge pressure and have ultimately left the taxpayer holding the bag.
this kind of info really frustrates me. not because i think you are wrong, it's just that i no longer trust stats coming out of anywhere. everything is so wildly distorted by adjustments for this, that and the next it's hard to rely on any data.
i don't know where you get inventory numbers from but what i see are loads of vacant homes. more than likely it's more reliable than my info but i check the county foreclosure auctions and on average, 4 days a week, they get through between 50 and 100 homes. on average about 5 sell everyday and the rest are returned to the banks. so call it what you want, from what i can see the banks are getting around 250 homes next week (verified on the clerk's foreclosure site). to me that means that they have to offload around 1000 homes a month just to keep up. then there is the backlog from last year and the year before when they were getting 500 a week.
i want to believe you it's just there's so much stuff just standing empty, so many people out of work, so many shops closing down i just don't see what is supporting this.
It was not my intention to frustrate you, but I'm frustrated as well. We know there are vacant houses. There's one in particular I want that I've been following for two years. Sitting vacant, abandoned, still in owner's name, taxes not paid, no evidence of utilities, and the owner is no where to be found. IDK.
The source of the inventory report I quoted above is from My Florida Regional MLS. The reports are publicly available at Downloads | Statistics. I'd be curious to get Crash's assessment since he/she's really into analysis...me too, but I also work for a living.
It was not my intention to frustrate you, but I'm frustrated as well. We know there are vacant houses. There's one in particular I want that I've been following for two years. Sitting vacant, abandoned, still in owner's name, taxes not paid, no evidence of utilities, and the owner is no where to be found. IDK.
The source of the inventory report I quoted above is from My Florida Regional MLS. The reports are publicly available at Downloads | Statistics. I'd be curious to get Crash's assessment since he/she's really into analysis...me too, but I also work for a living.
Yet by the realtor logic, that abandoned home is NOT considered inventory. In fact, the tens of thousands of properties in the Tampa Bay area that are sitting in the foreclosure queue and have essentially been left for dead are not considered inventory, either.
That's why the realtor forecasts have missed the huge drop in prices since the peak. Their definition of "supply" is completely and utterly wrong.
It was not my intention to frustrate you, but I'm frustrated as well. We know there are vacant houses. There's one in particular I want that I've been following for two years. Sitting vacant, abandoned, still in owner's name, taxes not paid, no evidence of utilities, and the owner is no where to be found. IDK.
The source of the inventory report I quoted above is from My Florida Regional MLS. The reports are publicly available at Downloads | Statistics. I'd be curious to get Crash's assessment since he/she's really into analysis...me too, but I also work for a living.
it's not you that's frustrating me it's the situation. i've been sitting on the fence for so long because i don't think that the places listed are worth what they're asking in most cases. i've been looking for a few acres for nearly 4 years and can think of hundreds of lots that were there when i started looking and are still listed today. as far as i'm concerned if a seller wants to list his hut for a gazillion dollars, that's their right. what annoys me is that there are tons of reo's and the banks have not been forced to liquidate in the same way that ordinary people would've been forced to if they were in a similar position. this is distorting the market wildly and giving both buyers and sellers the wrong signals. the sooner the banks are forced to clear out their closet, the quicker we find bottom, the quicker homes become affordable and those sitting on the fence can get off and we can once again experience a little price stability and people can buy without the fear of the rug being pulled out from under them
seems as though we have a lot in common then as i'm prone to overkill myself. as such my research is telling me to hold out, though i'm tired of rentals and the endless search for the bottom is getting tiresome. i agree that it was irritating to watch all my buds get new cars, boats, bikes etc when i knew they were putting themselves under huge pressure and have ultimately left the taxpayer holding the bag.
Given different circumstances upon which my research applied, mine might have lead me to your conclusion, but then, of course, I wouldn't have been looking. Though what I believe I found in the property I bought might have swayed me to my decision regardless.
Though I did drive lots of new cars during life as my jobs provided excellent benefits including company cars, I only owned my own first new car when I was in my 40s. I am still stunned when I see teens and 20somethings spending their or their parents' hard earned dollars on rapidly depreciating assets. My parents never would have let me get away with that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TampaKaren
It was not my intention to frustrate you, but I'm frustrated as well. We know there are vacant houses. There's one in particular I want that I've been following for two years. Sitting vacant, abandoned, still in owner's name, taxes not paid, no evidence of utilities, and the owner is no where to be found. IDK.
The source of the inventory report I quoted above is from My Florida Regional MLS. The reports are publicly available at Downloads | Statistics. I'd be curious to get Crash's assessment since he/she's really into analysis...me too, but I also work for a living.
I'm a he. As chi said, many bank owned are not part of inventory. They are considered the shadow inventory. (and lately I've seen even the yet to be foreclosed upon houses refered to also as shadow inventory). I do not however agree that is how realtor forecasts missed the mark. I'm afraid that was overly optimistic at best or self serving (nothing personal) at worst.
In fact, I think if anything that the shadow inventory is what is keeping prices up, not driving them down. For if that shadow came to light (came to market) then supply/demand would reduce value of all inventory.
So we have to look at who owns these now, the banks. Finally someone who can actually afford them (being propped up by taxpayer money and all that). Banks are in the business to make money, literally and literally because they make money (charging fees, selling assets, etc) and they make (manufacture) money (originating loans).
So what are the odds of the banksters shooting themselves in the foot, after they've been so careful to take aim at us. Why would they flood the market with shadow inventory. Plus, with our backing, they can afford to hold on until prices come up or at least just release the inventory as the market stablizes.
Sadly, I can not offer analysis of what any of that means, just of how I suspect it might work. Beyond that I leave it to the conspiracy theorists and the academics to sort this all out. I'm looking forward to reading about it in the history books some time after I finish my next career. (hey, I work too, this has just been some odd sabbatical).
In your case, 58robbo, that seller asking a gazillion dollars is probably being represented by a realtor who is putting his/her name and reputation behind the asking price. realtors are not required to take listings from unreasonable clients.
When I see agents listing properties for ridiculous prices, that tells me that the agent is either clueless or is willing to work for free, becuse that property will never sell.
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