Monday, October 08, 2007
20% of Homes For Sale Are Foreclosures
From Atlanta Business Chronicle (http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2007/10/08/story1.html?b=1191816000^1530283&page=1)
Nearly one in five homes for sale in metro Atlanta is being sold by a bank that acquired it via foreclosure.
Atlanta has 12,309 bank-owned, foreclosed homes for sale in the five-county metro area, out of 71,148 homes for sale, as of Oct. 3, according to RealtyTrac.com, a national foreclosure research company.
Because banks must be aggressive sellers, the flood of bank-owned properties onto the market threatens to soften home prices across metro Atlanta after years of solid growth.
Banks, unlike private sellers, are eager to resell homes, even below market value, to recoup some of their losses from an unpaid mortgage.
"As eager as a seller is, a bank's doubly interested," said Mike Wright, managing broker for Prudential Georgia and Atlanta Board of Realtors 2007 president.
In August, national real estate auction firm Hudson & Marshall Inc. sold 400 foreclosed homes, an Atlanta record for the company, at its local home auction.
Atlanta's 36,502 foreclosures in the first half of 2007 is a 10 percent increase over the same period in 2006.
Among the five core metro counties, Fulton County leads with 4,407 bank-owned foreclosures. Cobb County, with 1,373 bank-owned foreclosures, is last.
Yet despite those numbers, the increase in foreclosures so far hasn't caused a lot of damage.
Even though there are thousands of bank-owned properties on the market, the price hit in Atlanta has been relatively mild thus far, industry insiders said.
Nearly one in five homes for sale in metro Atlanta is being sold by a bank that acquired it via foreclosure.
Atlanta has 12,309 bank-owned, foreclosed homes for sale in the five-county metro area, out of 71,148 homes for sale, as of Oct. 3, according to RealtyTrac.com, a national foreclosure research company.
Because banks must be aggressive sellers, the flood of bank-owned properties onto the market threatens to soften home prices across metro Atlanta after years of solid growth.
Banks, unlike private sellers, are eager to resell homes, even below market value, to recoup some of their losses from an unpaid mortgage.
"As eager as a seller is, a bank's doubly interested," said Mike Wright, managing broker for Prudential Georgia and Atlanta Board of Realtors 2007 president.
In August, national real estate auction firm Hudson & Marshall Inc. sold 400 foreclosed homes, an Atlanta record for the company, at its local home auction.
Atlanta's 36,502 foreclosures in the first half of 2007 is a 10 percent increase over the same period in 2006.
Among the five core metro counties, Fulton County leads with 4,407 bank-owned foreclosures. Cobb County, with 1,373 bank-owned foreclosures, is last.
Yet despite those numbers, the increase in foreclosures so far hasn't caused a lot of damage.
Even though there are thousands of bank-owned properties on the market, the price hit in Atlanta has been relatively mild thus far, industry insiders said.
Labels: foreclosure
# posted by Bob @ 7:01 AM 
