Friday, March 14, 2008

"Unusually high default rates"

They're even following our real estate downturn in the UK. The Financial Times reports, "The slick real estate professionals who congregate each Friday night at the waterfront restaurants in Miami’s financial district seem unaware or unconcerned that they are relaxing near a crime scene."

"Three buildings in the Brickell area saw 166 units go into foreclosure last year with borrowers owing a total of $120m (£59m, €77m) on the properties."

"These unusually high default rates have attracted the attention of fraud investigators. 'There’s not just one or two cases [of mortgage fraud] in each building – there are 10 or 15,' said Lucas Lechuga, a Miami real estate broker. 'It’s a lot more widespread than people thought.'"

"One in every 29 homes in Miami-Dade County is now in foreclosure and the authorities estimate up to 30 per cent of all foreclosed properties in Miami-Dade county have been affected by fraud. A report yesterday by the Mortgage Asset Research Institute found that mortgage fraud rates in Florida outstripped every other state as a proportion of all loans taken out in 2007."

"Prices are falling faster in Miami than in any other city in the United States, with the latest Case-Shiller house price index showing the market dropped 17.5 per cent over the past year."

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

This problem could have been prevented. They were not even trying to hide it. Properties on the MLS were selling 50000 to 100000 over asking price(on the market 2 to 3 months). HELLO!
The appraiser could have easy spot this. Somebody needs to lose a license and should be fined at least.

Anonymous said...

todays F-d buyer . . . Floridian South Beach 650 west ave apt 2001, miami beach fl 33139, purchased 7/05 for 755K listed since dec for 619K~

the drunken duck said...

I would like to wish happy belated birthday to this house:

8556 NW 111 CT
Doral, FL 33178

It has been listed for 376 days, though you would not know it from the MLS.

Here is the price history:

Purchased in 2005 for USD 750k and first listed on the MLS by the owner on 8 March 2007. The price history is as follows:

Price Reduced: 03/20/07 -- $745,000 to $729,900
Price Reduced: 04/05/07 -- $729,900 to $715,000
Price Reduced: 04/28/07 -- $715,000 to $699,900
Price Reduced: 05/10/07 -- $699,900 to $685,900
Price Reduced: 05/19/07 -- $685,900 to $669,000
Price Reduced: 07/20/07 -- $669,000 to $649,000
Price Reduced: 08/04/07 -- $649,000 to $635,000
Price Reduced: 08/11/07 -- $635,000 to $620,000

Sometime afterwards, it was taken off the MLS and foreclosed on. It is now an REO and was relisted on 9/27/07. The REO price history is as an REO is as follows:


Price Reduced: 11/08/07 -- $675,000 to $655,000
Price Reduced: 12/10/07 -- $655,000 to $635,400
Price Reduced: 01/19/08 -- $635,400 to $615,400
Price Reduced: 02/22/08 -- $615,400 to $595,400
Price Reduced: 03/13/08 -- $595,400 to $565,630

It has been a lonely year for house 8556. All the best on year 2.

Anonymous said...

AP
Home Sales Rose, Prices Fell in February
Monday March 24, 10:44 am ET
By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer
Home Sales Rise Unexpectedly but Prices Keep Tumbling

Anonymous said...

Good news: prices are going up again!

What a bunch of BS the "median price" data is:

PB Post

I remember the last time they said median prices went up, 3 months later they were way down.

I follow the local market very closely - prices are going down and accelerating down. To say they went up is absurd.

Anonymous said...

They are using month to month numbers, which are not adjusted for seasonality. That is why most comparisons are year over year. It is like comparing December retail numbers to January.

Regardless, they can report what they want. Buyers simply refuse to buy until prices come down to reasonable levels, and the newspaper won't influence most people either way. At least I hope it doesn't, for their sake!

Anonymous said...

Lots of dung flying downtown Tampa today smell bad for the banks. I went to the Tampa REDC foreclosure sale at the Tampa convention center. It was a joke. In my opinion, these are just markerting plows to move dead inventory not cell homes. In my opinion, these banks are not really to sell. They want to try and trick people and con people into paying high values or full market price. What happened today proves it. THe house which was number three on the list 5157 Loquat Ct Palm Harbour , FL 34685. Look at the market comps yourself. Well first they skipped it and auctioned it off as number #5 in the auction order. It was a cash sale. It went up on the auction block and got auctioned for 390k. About 50k higher than market value. A third of the audience beleived it was shill betting and walked out of the auction. Yes a mass exodus. The auctioned begged the people to stay as they were leaving saying it may be auctioned off again later. Well an hour and a half later it was back up for auction like many of the homes. In my opinion lots of shill bids. If auctionaire doesnt get the price he wants in the shrill bid process it goes up again later. Scam cheating and lies still beware

the drunken duck said...

The latest Miami-Dade Mortgage Stats:

Jan 08 3,434
Feb 08 3,721
Mar 08 4,238

Extrapolating Q1, we are looking at around 46,000 in foreclosures in 2008. However, the per day rate has increased from 111/day in Jan to 137/day in March. If we kept the 137/day for the remainder of the year, the 2008 total would be around 49,000. If the per day rate increase by just 3% (Feb month-over -month was 15.% and Mar was 6.5%), the annual foreclosure rate for Miami-Dade would be 54,000. That is a stunning amount.

I might add that the past several yeas annual foreclosures were as follows:

2002 14,567 (40/day)
2003 11,605 (32/day)
2004 9,606 (26/day)
2005 7,829 (21/day)
2006 9,814 (27/day)
2007 26,391 (72/day)

Anonymous said...

It's sad people are losing their homes! Ironically, the places where the bubbles are most talked about (FL and SoCal, etc.), the raltors in those areas are finding success with what I'm doing!

lokywoky said...

Your comment that the homeowners are committing 'fraud' by lying about their income - I resent that.

In the case of our house, the fraud was committed by the appraiser. They told us how much the loan would be on the value they appraised. We said we wouldn't do the loan because it was just trading nickels.

They asked how much cash out we needed. Presto! A week later the house was re-appraised and the value went up by just that amount. All we did was mow the back lawn and wash the mold off the eaves. Yeah. That was worth $15,000 in one week.

I would bet there is a lot more of that crap then you would apparently like to admit.

As far as the borrowers lying? Usually, it's a "no-doc" loan and when the borrower's income isn't up to snuff - the bank/broker inflates the income - I know people who didn't even know what the bank had decided their income "was" until closing day - and sometimes it was almost double what they actually made. And this is the borrower's fraud how?

Pffft

140 per sq foot said...

Andre,

Could you post a link or web address for the site where you get the "average listing price" data?

Thanks, we still miss your commentary, but I see your comments on the Sun Topix.

It's all unfolding as we had predicted, only question now is if there will be a second wave come 2009.
Take care.

South Florida Housing Bubble said...

140,

Here's the link:

http://www.housingtracker.net/askingprices/Florida/Miami-FortLauderdale-MiamiBeach

It's also on the side of this blog.

South Florida Housing Bubble said...

140,

BTW, you'll notice the median asking price in South Florida is now down to $245,000 -- down from $379,966 in April 2006 when the site first started posting its data. However, the median listing price was actually closer to $425,000 late in 2005 when the South Florida market peaked.

In other words, we've seen a staggering 42.3% drop from the end of 2005.

Ouch.

It's also interesting to see the inventory levels that seem to have stagnated right around 112,000 units. It's been at that level for around 18 months. Since this equates to around 3 years worth of inventory, there will be no slowing in the drops.

I'm amazed by all this. I expected 30% to 40% drops from the late 2005 prices.

Now, based on the continued massive inventory levels, I think South Florida could see 60% drops.

I knew it would get ugly, but I never thought it would get this ugly.

Anonymous said...

Brickell area condos are bad news with high rate of defaults. However, things are completely different for Sunny Isles Beach luxury condominiums. Most recently built Jade Miami in Sunny Isles Beach is currently in it's closing stages. Despite the weak market and still high prices there were 80% closing rate so far in just two months. Yes, although everyone screams crisis, the smart investors are buying luxury Miami Beach condos.

Fixizin said...

Oh great, Luxury Condo Expert, aka Lana Belenky and her gang of Russian conmen and con-women, is back, shilling for the faux "value" in high-end condos.

Yeah, I'm falling for it... I'll be right over. :rolleyes: