Based on the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index for 20 major cities over the past months, Detroit is among the cities where home prices have dropped substantially since the downturn began and is among those which are still struggling from declining home values. The median distressed home sales price has fallen to a low of $8,000 last August, far below the $59,700 median price in August 2005. Nearly 25 percent of the more than 4,000 houses available for sale in September were foreclosures and total home sales dropped by almost 20 percent compared to sales in September last year.

Because of the high unemployment in the city, people have left and now, there are only around 900,000 residents, far below the 2-million population in the 1950s.

Among the neighborhoods thought to be immune from foreclosures because of the high number of residents who are judges, lawyers, auto-industry executives and educational professionals is Indian Village. Here, investors and first time home buyers can find a lot of bargain repo properties for sale.

Because many of these professionals were laid off and many of them were unable to convince their lenders to reduce their monthly payments, many were forced to let their homes go into foreclosure. Now, about 15 percent of the 350 houses in Indian Village are foreclosures.

To save Indian Village from the deterioration and collapse that occurred in other Detroit neighborhoods, residents in the area took action and decided to find a realtor committed to the neighborhood and help sell the foreclosed properties in the neighborhood to families and individuals who will live in the properties and help preserve the neighborhood.

The residents found Joy Santiago, who arrived in Detroit in the 1980s from Ann Arbor and started working in real estate in the 1990s, focusing on Indian Village.

Since then, Santiago has been successful in creating buzz about the neighborhood, especially its lower-priced mansions. She has organized bus tours where she talks about the backgrounds and histories of the homes she showed.

Among these houses is a four-bedroom Colonial that was built in 1925 but still sturdy. It is being offered at only $39,000. Another is an 8-bedroom Colonial mansion which is being offered at only $189,000. These are only two of many bargain foreclosed properties for sale being offered in Detroit.

Bargain Repo Properties for Sale Abound in Detroit is a post from: Listings Foreclosures

In June, 31 percent of all resale of condos and houses were from repossession property inventories. This percentage is lower than the 45.4 percent share in January when repossession property sales reached their peak in nine months. But the percentage is still significantly higher than the 17.9 percent share in June 2008.

Nevertheless, real estate analysts in Santa Clara and in the Bay Area are encouraged by the record home sales in June, which reached their highest levels in 3 years.

In June, 1,458 houses were sold, representing a jump of 31 percent from sales in June last year. The June sales marked the seventh straight month that house sales rose in the valley on a year-to-year basis.

Because of the drop in repossession property sales and the increase in sales of higher-priced homes, the median sales price for pre-owned single-family houses in June increased to $485,000.

Similarly, the median home sales price in the Bay Area also increased. In June, the median for single-family houses rose to $670,000, compared to sales prices in previous months, but it is still substantially lower than the peak median price of $805,500 in July 2007.

Sales prices in the valley reached their lowest points in January, when the median price was only $420,000.

According to analysts in the region, the median sales price increased because the number of higher-priced homes sold in June increased. Sellers of high-end homes reduced further their asking prices after their properties are not getting sold.

In Santa Clara, homes priced above $1 million comprised more than 11 percent of total home sales in June. This represented a drop from the sales in May, but almost double of high-end sales in January.

Analysts also contended that the increase in the FHA conforming loan limit from just above $400,000 to $729,750 may have been a factor in the rise in sales of higher-priced homes.

In the Bay Area, more than 8,600 houses of all types were sold in June, marking a jump of 20 percent compared to June 2008 sales. The median sales price was $352,000, a decrease of around 27 percent compared to the median price in June 2008.

On the whole, repossession property sales in the Silicon Valley are still high despite a drop in their share of the resale market.

Silicon Valley Repossession Property Sales Still Up is a post from: Listings Foreclosures

These 35 counties, located in places high on foreclosures by state rankings, contributed over 1.5 million foreclosures to the 2.3 million units counted by RealtyTrac. Foreclosure filings include notices of default, auctions and bank owned homes. RealtyTrac admits the same repo property can be counted twice but its data remains one of the most credible measures of foreclosures by state in the country.

University of Virginia urban and environmental planning professor William Lucy analyzed the link between mortgage lenders and defaulting mortgage loans and found out that foreclosures in just a few areas affected banks, which spread the foreclosure problem because of their national operations. While other places in the country had only a negligible number of foreclosures, they were affected by the mortgage crisis when national banks that focused on mortgage investments got battered by defaults in places high on foreclosures by states lists.

Christopher Mayer, real estate analyst at Columbia Business School, supports the notion that the crisis was spread by banks. The case of banking corporation Wachovia Corp. is illustrative of what happened. Wachovia’s finances got clobbered when its mortgage company’s operations in Florida and California were hit by delinquencies and foreclosures.

Most of the 35 counties are in California, Nevada, Arizona, Florida and Michigan, the states among the top ten in foreclosures by state rankings. Eight counties in the top four states accounted for about 25 percent of the 2.3 million total foreclosure filings in 2008.

In addition, while the 35 counties represent only about 20 percent of total U.S. households, they contributed over half of the total foreclosure filings in 2008. It is surprising to find out that in about one-fifth of the country’s total counties, in places low on foreclosures by state rankings, the number of foreclosures actually decreased in comparison to 2006 filings.

With the contention that the foreclosure crisis is concentrated in places high on foreclosures by state rankings, Brookings Institution analyst Alan Mallach said that President Barack Obama’s $75 billion program could face challenges from the political sector. The program’s critics and opponents could use the data to add to their arguments against the administration’s foreclosure prevention program.

35 Counties Push Up Foreclosures by State Rankings is a post from: Listings Foreclosures

According to housing analysts, about 19 million homes across the country are unoccupied, contributing to the rise in foreclosures by state. This figure translates to almost 1 unit out of seven homes, the highest ratio ever recorded since the 1960s. Since only about 6 million homes are listed for rent or for sale, home tracking firms expect more foreclosed homes to add to the market already overloaded with bargain homes.

Foreclosures by state are expected to rise further as reports show that 1 in nine mortgages is defaulting and going into foreclosure and existing-home sales in January are declining at the fastest rate since 2007.

In California, which is among the top three in rankings of foreclosures by state, home prices have declined so much that first-time homebuyers and investors who previously were not able to buy homes are now able to buy.

Christian Punsal, an Elk Grove city employee in his early 20s, has purchased a three-bedroom house for only $193,000. His monthly payment for this unit, which cost $336,000 when he was still in college, is even $100 less than his current rent at his smaller apartment.

In Florida, another state among the top in listings of foreclosures by state, many of the unoccupied foreclosures houses are in suburbs. This means that prices will take time in recovering and many not get back to their previous price levels in many years as many suburban residents have moved to downtown areas to look for jobs.

Even in New York, which is not even among the top ten in rankings of foreclosures by state, sales of condos and co-op apartments in January have also declined by 52 percent. According to Jonathan Miller, head of appraisal firm Miller Samuel, the housing market has been severely affected by Wall Street layoffs, stricter lending requirements and a surplus of new apartments and unoccupied previously-owned homes.

Ivy Zelman, head of housing research company Zelman & Associates, is concerned about April, the month when home sales traditionally start to rise. He expects more foreclosures to enter the market as mortgage firms end their voluntary moratoriums on foreclosures.

Home Sales Down, Foreclosures by State Up is a post from: Listings Foreclosures