Foreclosures Quadruple in St. Lucie, Remain Unchanged on Palm Beach
The number of homeowners falling behind on their Florida mortgages nearly quadrupled in St. Lucie County last month compared with a year ago - but remained nearly unchanged in Palm Beach County.
In Martin County, households entering some stage of foreclosure declined by 49 percent year-over-year, while Florida foreclosures surged 71 percent.
Nationwide, U.S. foreclosures dipped below a two-year high set the previous month, but rose 62 percent from April 2006 in the wake of falling home prices and the bad credit Florida mortgage mess, analysts said.
“What’s going on up and down the coast?” said Gary Woodfield, a litigation partner at Edwards Angell in West Palm Beach. “Everyone is strained by the triple combination of increased interest rates, taxes and insurance. But the Palm Beach County economy is stronger.
At least for the present, we can handle it.”
Florida had the second-highest number of filings in the nation with a total of 14,318 households entering some stage of foreclosure last month, Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac said. California is No. 1 with 30,505 filings.
The industry research firm defines foreclosures as default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions.
“I know that banks are pleading to take properties off their hands even before they get to their REO (real-estate-owned) department,” said Delray Beach luxury homebuilder Frank McKinney. “Twenty years ago, we sat on the courthouse steps and bid on properties and bought them.”
That’s no longer happening, McKinney said, “which shows me this huge flood of foreclosures will continue to hit South Florida well into next year.”
Depreciating home prices make it hard for owners facing foreclosure to sell their houses for what they owe, while tighter lending standards make it hard for potential buyers to qualify for a Florida home mortgage loan.
Indeed, the National Association of Realtors recently predicted that home prices would fall in 2007, the first such drop since the Great Depression. Meanwhile, a NAR report issued Tuesday said sales for the first quarter of this year fell in 31 of 48 states. Two states weren’t covered.
Florida ranked second in the nation with a sales drop of more than 25 percent in the first quarter of this year, NAR said. Nevada ranked No. 1 at 27 percent.
In Palm Beach County, the median price of an existing home fell 4 percent in the first quarter compared with the first quarter of 2006, the Florida Association of Realtors said Tuesday. That put the median price at $378,200, compared with $392,900 in the first quarter of 2006, FAR said.
Sales dropped 20 percent, a troubling double-digit decline in what many had hoped would be a successful spring selling season.
“Walk into any … Best Buy or Circuit City and ask them about sales of big-screen TVs and computers,” said Mike Morgan, Florida mortgage broker/owner of Morgan Florida Real Estate Group in Stuart. “Boats, cars, clothing, jewelry and more,” he said, ticking off big-ticket items that debt-plagued homeowners can no longer afford.
“The housing ATM is out of money,” he said.
In the Treasure Coast, the median price of an existing single-family home fell 8 percent in the first quarter, FAR said, to $240,000 from $260,200. Sales in the investor-heavy region dropped a whopping 36 percent compared with the first quarter of 2006.
A survey of real estate experts released last month showed that a “growing number” of industry professionals believe that home prices are staying even with inflation, according to Wayne Archer, director of the University of Florida’s Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies, which conducted the poll.
Looking ahead, however, not all were so optimistic.
U.S. home builders - who have taken a beating from canceled contracts and a growing backlog of unsold houses - rated the “traffic of potential buyers” so exceedingly low this month that analyst Patrick McPherron of Moody’s Economy.com wondered Tuesday if the Fed might seriously entertain lowering the interest rate target.
In a report also issued Tuesday the National Association of Home Builders’ index of builder sentiment was down in every component, including present conditions and conditions for the next six months.
The results of the survey matched a 15-year low set in September.
SOURCE: The Palm Beach Post
