Earlier this week, RealtyTrac released its second quarter U.S. Foreclosure Sales Report which confirmed the statistics released earlier by Moody’s Investor Service (discussed in last week’s post) insofar as pre-foreclosure short sales are increasing in popularity with lenders across the country. According to RealtyTrac, these pre-foreclosure short sales increased 19% from the first quarter of 2011 to the second quarter.
RealtyTrac reports that home sales either (1) in some stage of foreclosure or (2) bank owned accounted for 31% of all U.S. residential sales in the second quarter of 2011, up from 24% of all sales in the same time period last year, i.e., the second quarter of 2010. According to the RealtyTrac numbers, 102,407 pre-foreclosure homes (covering homes in mortgage default all the way to homes set for a foreclosure auction) sold to third parties in the second quarter, an increase of 19% from the previous quarter in 2011 and up from 10% of all sales in the second quarter of 2010.
Will Some of the Problems of a Short Sale Be Solved Now? Things Look Promising for Shorter Time Periods.
Of course, there are still problems in dealing with a short sale. Many buyers complain that short sales take too long. Buyers do not want to face months and months of waiting for a home purchase to close — many buyers don’t want to wait that long, no matter what how great the bargain might be.
However, RealtyTrac is reporting that lenders may be more interested in moving things along now than they were in the past — and short sales may be concluding faster in the future than they have in the past. Which, of course, is good news for everyone: lender, buyer, seller.
“The jump in pre-foreclosure sales volume coupled with bigger discounts on pre-foreclosures and a shorter average time to sell pre-foreclosures all point to a housing market that is starting to focus on more efficiently clearing distressed inventory through more streamlined short sales — at least in some areas,” James Saccacio, CEO of RealtyTrac explained in the company’s news release. “This gives distressed homeowners who do not qualify for loan modification or refinancing — or who are not interested in those options and want to sell — a better chance of completing a short sale to avoid foreclosure. Streamlined short sales also give lenders the opportunity to more pre-emptively purge non-performing loans from their portfolios and avoid the long, costly and increasingly messy process of foreclosure and the subsequent sale of an REO — which may end up selling for a lower price than it would have as a pre-foreclosure short sale and in the meantime further stresses already overloaded REO departments.”
Want to Know More About Florida Short Sales?
In today’s marketplace, Florida homeowners interested in selling their homes to avoid foreclosure must deal not only with today’s ailing economy (especially in South Florida) but also the complexities of the legal transactions involved (including deficiency judgments). Additionally, underwater homeowners must deal with being targeted by a growing number of criminal con artists that are preying on vulnerable Florida homeowners. (See our earlier post regarding this month’s FBI Fraud Report for details.)
Therefore, it is a prudent for a Florida homeowner to educate himself or herself on the state of the real estate and banking industries and then seeks the guidance of an experienced foreclosure defense and short sale attorney. For more information on Florida short sales, please feel free to review the following:
