A Coming Flood of Bank Owned Homes

“There’s going to be a flood of bank-owned homes listed for sale at some point.”

-John Burns, a real-estate consultant based in Irvine, Calif.

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Yes, there certainly will be. Burns estimates there will be a “large numbers of foreclosures” that will drive home prices down 6% next year. Analyst Ivy Zelman pegs the number of coming foreclosures at three million to four million homes over the next few years.

All of the voluntary foreclosure moratoriums have slowed “the flow of properties headed toward foreclosure sales” regardless of deep in distress borrowers are. These delays only work to prolong the mortgage crisis and prevent prices from falling to more natural levels.

Thus, it creates a “growing ‘shadow’ inventory of pent-up supply that will eventually hit the market.”

Here’s the excerpt from the WSJ:

“The size of this shadow inventory is a source of concern and debate among real-estate agents and analysts who worry that when the supply is unleashed, it could interrupt the budding housing recovery and ignite a new wave of stress in the housing market . . . Analysts who track the shadow market have focused primarily on the gap between the number of seriously delinquent loans and the number of foreclosed homes for sale by mortgage companies. A loan is considered seriously delinquent, which typically means it is headed to foreclosure, if it is 90 days or more past due.

As of July, mortgage companies hadn’t begun the foreclosure process on 1.2 million loans that were at least 90 days past due, according to estimates prepared for The Wall Street Journal by LPS Applied Analytics, which collects and analyzes mortgage data. An additional 1.5 million seriously delinquent loans were somewhere in the foreclosure process, though the lender hadn’t yet acquired the property. The figures don’t include home-equity loans and other second mortgages.

Moreover, there were 217,000 loans in July where the borrower hadn’t made a payment in at least a year but the lender hadn’t begun the foreclosure process. In other words, 17% of home mortgages that are at least 12 months overdue aren’t in foreclosure, up from 8% a year earlier.”

This overhang is likely going to be problematic for years to come . . .

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Source:
Delayed Foreclosures Stalk Market
RUTH SIMON and JAMES R. HAGERTY
WSJ, SEPTEMBER 23, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125366552480532521.html