Today the Miami Herald reports on a tsunami of foreclosures clogging local courts (26,391 in Miami in '07 and 1,467 in January '08). "More than 95 percent of properties for sale (are) being bought back by lenders.”According to Property Appraiser records, Wells Fargo owns 224 properties in Miami Dade County, Aurora Loan Services owns 87 properties, Chase Home Finance owns 33 properties, Fremont Investment owns 91 properties, HSBC Bank owns 113 and Deutsche Bank owns 337 properties. There are many more.
On September 19th, 2007 we recorded properties listed for foreclosure auction, planning to check back on the status of the properties.
That current status of the first 8 scheduled for foreclosure sale on Septemeber 19th are as follows:
First we have Frontal who purchased his home, Folio No.: 30-3102-007-0450, 2/2006 for $207,000. As of the date of the foreclosure sale, he owed $228,846.71. Today Frontal is still listed as owner, even though he never paid what was owed, according to the property appraiser records. Which means, HSBC Mortgage Services has possession.
The second property owned by Oscar, Folio No.: 01-3123-037-2650, went to foreclosure sale September 19th. It is listed on the property appraisers website as now owned by: HSBC Bank USA National Association.
Third, Felix is still listed as owner, Folio No.: 30-4929-010-1230;. Felix purchased his property for $590,000 in August 2006. The foreclosure was granted to Wells Fargo Bank, September 14th foreclosure amount: $500,575.68.
Fourth we have Carlos, Folio No.: 01-4139-084-1940, who paid $620,000 in May of 2006 for his condo. It is now listed as owned by Aurora Loan Services, LLC.
Fifth we have Berta who bought her home, Folio No.: 04-2026-002-0540, in September of 2006 for $451,000. Listed owner is now Branch Banking & Trust, Co.
Sixth we have Ivon, Folio No.: 30-4923-032-2580, who paid $434,000 in October 2006 for her home. The home is owned now by Avelo Mortgage, LLC.
Seventh we have one that actually sold! Folio No.: 30-4922-024-0400. The foreclosed on, Annette, did not appear to have sold the property according to Clerk Records, so we believe it was the bank, Wells Fargo, that made the sale.
Eighth, we have Mario, Folio No.: 30-4910-077-0070 , who is still listed as owner. He paid $385,000 for this property in January 2006. His foreclosure amount was $324,612. According to County Records, he did not pay off this amount, so we believe the home is owned by the mortgage lender: Wells Fargo.
All these foreclosures raise a series of questions that the financial press has not answered, to our knowledge:
If the banks are holding all these assets on their books, how are they priced?
If the properties were sold within traunches of mortgage backed securities, or, held as collateral for collateral debt obligations, does the write-down of the original asset (ie. the home) correlate in any understandable way to the value of security that has already, one assumes, been written down too?
When will the write-downs be reflected in the asset value, then, of the house at auction?
There is an enormous volume of foreclosed properties sitting on bank books and, one assumes, sitting vacant in neighborhoods across Miami and America. How are these properties going to be sold, if the market will not take them at auction at a price acceptable to the banks?
We think we are watching a disaster unfold, for which no presidential candidate, Congress, Treasury or Federal Reserve official has answers. It seems that the only response is to "beef up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac" so that they can make bigger individual loans. Remember, it was only a few years ago that Congress was looking at removing the special prerogatives of these quasi-governmental agencies, because--in part--their CEO's were using government cover to employ the agencies as personal piggy banks.
A last question: does anyone get held accountable?
15 comments:
Nope. They get re-elected. It's the same democracy we're exporting to Iraq.
who is paying the taxes and upkeep, etc.???
Anon
Get real...Contrary to your mentality and beliefs its not Bush's fault that the real estate bubble collapsed. No one was complaining when RE kept rising and people were making tons of money and portfolios looked great. Everyone was happy! Well the shit hit the fan! For the most part the ones at fault are the reits, investors, buyers, flippers, speculators, the real estate brokers-mortgage brokers, bankers, foreign flight capital, cmo's, to name a few. Greed, fraud, no scruples, and deceit kicked in. Of course excessive insurance costs and high property taxes also contributed. The major problem here is a result of free market driven forces, nothing else...More government will not solve all of our problems and our government cannot have their hands everywhere. It is up to us, and the legal system to put away and punish those colostomy bags that have screwed us. We still live in the greatest country on earth with the best systems in the world.
Touche!
The banks are holding most of these properties to contain the downward spiral of real estate. They can only hang on so long.
I fault the banks that not require enough equity for the loans. There was a 20% down rule at one time in real estate. What happened? When Republicans are in charge anything goes.
Touche yourself.
To this day , I recall with horror seeing Bush announce during a midday speech that every American should be able to buy a home.
Well, thanks to one of his biggest campaign contributors,Ameriquest (or some such name)Mortgage, lots of Americans could and DID buy homes.What they could not do was AFFORD to keep them.
Not everyone should be a homeowner and as a matter of fact it is a pretty sweet deal to be watching from the sidelines as this meltdown continues.
I won't be buying a home until we revert to fundamentals of buying a home are associated with taxes,insurance and wages.
Similar to the S&L crisis it looks like the tax payer once again has the priviledge to bail out the banksters. Personally I would prefer if the government/tax payer stays out of this. If some banks go under, good. We need a thinning of the herd anyway.
"Get real"? This has nothing to do with free markets. Banks get bailed out of the consequences of making bad loans on the taxpayers' tab. If Morgan Stanley was GM, they would be told to cut losses, trim operations and fire workers as a reminder that they, not the taxpayers, are responsible for their problems.
None of the the Mae/Mac associations operate under a system of "free enterprise"--they get ridiculous and unreal predatory privileges on the weakest sectors of society--students, the working class--from the federal government, who created them.
Lastly, this whole mess was engineered by our great unelected, unsanctified and unconstitutional (not that that last bit counts for much these days) branch of government, the Federal Reserve Bank. You can thank Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke for pumping cheap credit into the market and bowing to executive pressure (under Clinton AND the Bushes) to keep on printing the greenbacks.
No, the reason this problem is so bad and is getting worse is because the federal government has not allowed and is still not allowing financial markets to cool naturally. They have been delaying the correction by deflecting any sign of recession, the end result will be a crash, and when it comes, it is the modest but wise hard-working Americans who save their money, not the robber-barons in D.C., who will be the losers.
All this is to say nothing of the leveraging of these effects by the outsourcing of our manufacturing base, the importation of Third World slave labor from our BROKEN SOUTHERN BORDER (a concept with which Miamians should be all too familiar) and our subsequent dependence on the goodwill of foreign government lenders ("reserve holders").
How's that for a touch of reality?
Ron Paul for President !!!!!!!!!!
Nice touch of reality.
Hmmmm...this "touch of reality" could really end up sucking big time for all of us. My father always taught me the KISS philosophy of life....Keep It Simple Stupid! Root of the problem as follows
1. Loose monetary policy by the Fed.
2. Elected officials(Bush/Clinton/senate/congress all of them) asleep at the wheel.
3. GREED, from ALL parties involved
Go on line to the property appraisers site and download your application for portability. It's a well-kept secret but you can get portability today! Then use it to screw the county!
Half a year...what is happening to these houses, is the grass 12 inches high? Are the pools green? Who is taking care of them?
You know what I think stinks?
It stinks for those of us sitting in houses that we have lived in most of our adult lives and are teetering on the edge not because the mortgage rates have gone up, but because the escrow for taxes and interest has pushed the mortgage payment out of reach. We are the ones who worked hard as young adults to buy the house, and now as older adults we face losing it simply because we own it, not because we were stupid.
(The neighbors keep an eye on the foreclosures; they call the agent, bank, city or team metro to enforce high grass and other issues.)
Freemarkets is what is ruining this country. The healthcare works the same way. Not Bush's fault yet he is doing worst by given a stimulus package that you will have to pay back. Listen, its tax payers money going to the stimulus, just like its going to Iraq. Do we have anything to be proud of from iraq? nothing, just dead good soldiers fighting for nothing. We are not more secure, they are not more secure. We just keep giving up our liberties in the name of fear. Now we will be given up our money too. We conquered one of the richest oil producing countries and still pay $3.00 a gallon. Freemarkets were designed to make people rich, not you, not me, the few. They know americans will spend every dollar they dont have to keep up with the joneses. Keep paying your 19% interest on the LCD made in China so you can stimulate the economy here. Does that make sense?
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