Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Foreclosure Statistics. By Geniusofdespair

I am going to let the statistics tell the story. (Note from Gimleteye: The statistics, unfortunately, do not tell the whole story. Banks have been arbitrarily allowed to hold onto parts of their mortgage portfolios by the FDIC, using boom times assessed values, in order to prevent a massive collapse of the industry. The statistics would be much higher if banks had been required to mark-to-market their portfolios. One of the untold stories of the bust is how banks decide who to foreclose on, and who to delay. Just like some banks were too big to fail, some of the banks big mortgagees have also been too big to fail: Jorge Perez, Related Group, is one example. Perez' real estate failures should have been enough to keep him out of the development business for the rest of his life. How many millions did his misadventures in development cost bank shareholders and, through zoning and permitting, taxpayers? Or are we to believe that "it's all good." Journalists have failed to tell these stories. Perhaps our readers have personal stories to anonymously share along these lines ... ) 

Thank you Gimleteye, appreciate the feedback. Anyway, here are the statistics, maybe not such good news after all:

In 2011 the foreclosure total for the first three months was 3,070. In 2012 it is more than twice that.
In January 2009 there were 6,063; February 5,942; March 7,103: Total 19,108. We are at a third of those numbers in 2012. But don't rejoice yet, because in 2005 we had  only 7,829 foreclosures for the whole year. This 2012  number of 6,255 is only for 3 months.
Looking at this 2009 chart of Real Estate Owned by the lenders, Moss' Commission District 9 had the most by far. This is also where the worst sprawl development occurred. Sorenson's District 8 was also home to a lot of sprawl development and that came in second. I hope we learned that sprawl doesn't pay.

19 comments:

Gimleteye said...

No we didn't learn anything, G.O.D.

Anonymous said...

I would speculate there is a huge "shadow" of pre foreclosure housing in the pipeline that will make these charts dwarf.

If I read correctly this morning, the taxpayers are on the hook for at least 60 billion dollars of the bank bail outs. This isn't including the incredibly stupid and premature settlement with the industry Florida and other states made with the banks.

Before Moss was "don't move the UDB", he turned a mute and blind eye within his own district. Now, look at the mess.

As to Mr. (I have an art museum named after me) Perez, he should be in jail along with the US Century Gang. Perez made all these side deals as his badly envisioned ship was sinking. He profited from his own foreclosures on the management side of the deals.

We lost environmental resources never to be gained back due to this "bubble" and the worst is coming, trust me! Just wait to re crunch these numbers at the end of the year.

The State has done away with the mediation program for homesteaded homeowners because it wasn't effective. It wasn't effective because the banks wouldn't cooperate. It was a well planned strategy of self destruction of a program never really given a chance to work.

And, Gimleteye is correct about the banks not marking to market. It's a smoke and mirrors game the banks are playing to hide their real losses.

Anonymous said...

Thank you President Obama for this recession.

Geniusofdespair said...

I think not. Bush left office in January 2009. The recession was well underway in 2007. I know I had just purchased a property. And, he couldn't make a quick turn-around as the hole he inherited was too deep. You can't lay the blame on the president.

Anonymous said...

Why don't we read about all this in the Herald?????

Anonymous said...

Is it true that the Property Appraiser has not been incorporating foreclosures into the values for properties in Miami? With these numbers that I am reason here it would seem that foreclosures would have had an affect on taxable value. Eye on Miami what say you?

Geniusofdespair said...

Last anon that is my understanding that they are not factoring in the foreclosures. Of course if they had, all our properties would be showing even more of a loss in value.

Anonymous said...

Geniusofdespair,

I have been looking at realty prices for the last 2-3 months and noticed that banks are holding on to A HIGH amount of properties, is there a chart or statistics that show you y-over-y or month-over-month how many REOs there are in the system ??

Meaning are the number of REOs increasing each month ???

Anonymous said...

Fraud, fraud, everywhere.

Geniusofdespair said...

We have a very good property appraiser, Pedro Garcia, I have sent him this post, and he might be able to answer our questions in a post tomorrow. I think he might have information on REO's or where to find that information. He always answers our questions promptly.

Anonymous said...

Recession? This is by all means a Depression. The Recession started December 2007, three straight years of recession is technically called a Depression, unless you want to only account in only the first data releases and forget about the revisions. Heavy movement created by speculators does not represent hundreds of millions of workers and their outlook. Sometime in the future this era will be looked back as a full fledged Depression.

Anonymous said...

Is it common for property appraisers (private and/or public) to include foreclosures in valuations? Based on his website I cannot figure it out. If Garcia didn't use foreclosures doesn't that mean my value could be lower (and my tax bill) If he did?

The clerks web site is very good and full of information. For instance it says that there are 100,000 property value appeals filed yearly out of around 800,000 properties. Why so many? What does that mean? Is it normal or abnormal in relation to other counties? Has this number trended up or down since we started electing a property appraiser?

I know you say he is "good" but since you are so good at research and educating us can you answer some I these questions? I would consider you un-biased rather than a guy running for office to keep his job.

Geniusofdespair said...

I did have a real estate license once. All I remember is "don't mess with escrow money". You need an expert like Pedro to answer some of the questions you guys are posing. Running or not, he is the person with the answers. I would rather see him in the job rather than a Term limited Tallahassee politician who like me knows little about property appraising.

Anonymous said...

Pedro may good, but he certainly took in and hid Alvarez's lapdog and Hialeah fundraising special Miss Millie when the crud was flying on the 29th floor. She was responsible for the poor services from his office and broke all sorts of rules doing it. She wouldn't even speak English willingly and Pedro made her a community liaison. hah.

Anonymous said...

Pedro Garcia and the entire property appraisers office need to go. THey perform poor investigtions and Pedro will not speak to the common citizen. He always has one of his lapdog staff to call. He is awful. I would vote for BOZO and I am not the only one that feel this way. I just wonder who is running his office he certainly, is not. Maybe he gets his marching orders from the Bell/Moss since they have the most forclosures in their district. He needs to include the foreclosures and let our property values drop like a rock.Stop this dishonesty, the property values were to high to begin with. I notice commissioners are taking advantage of the low land values thanks to Mr. Pedro Garcia. When land values go up after he is reelected some commissioners, family and friends will become wealthy when they sell for a profit. Wake up property owners and vote. Its sad for our county. Remember this opinion is shared by a group. Pedro has put a lot of people on the street due to liens and various fees imposed by his office.

Anonymous said...

I think the Broward property appraiser does a great job and perhaps Miami Dade could use their model. Remember when there was the issue (prior to Pedro) where they wouldn't take in the short sale prices when calculating property values. That's when the backlog of abatement hearings went through the roof. It took me two years to be heard but I did prevail.

I believe their also may be a trend, and very unscientific, in regard to Homesteaded properties being valued lower. I'm not talking about the automatic 3% cap in the taxable valuation, I'm talking about the actual valuation period. I've looked at dozens of properties within the same blocks and it always appears that if a property is not Homestead exempted, the valuation is at least 20% higher than the Homesteaded neighbor - again, not talking about the "taxable" portion which is capped.

I also believe they don't have accurate records on improved property - like Robaina's being taxed as vacant land when there was in fact property on the lot not being taxed. So, I hope there is more diligence there to correct and back tax those cheats.

Geniusofdespair said...

Readers: during elections, the other camp often comes here to bash their opponents posing as regular citizens. I don't buy it.

I don't take criticism seriously at election time. Term Limited State Rep. Carlos Lopez Cantera is running for Property Appraiser and I believe his campaign's fingerprints are here...

I called him a JERK in my post of March 1st:

"Term limited Rep. Carlos Lopez-Cantera (don't vote for him for Property Appraiser) filed an amendment that "limits the time for legal challenges to 30 days and sets other limitations that would make it harder - because of time restrictions- to challenge environmental permits. And it applies statewide. "

He wants to thwart the groups trying to stop the Biscayne Bay dredging. In his little mind he was addressing one issue but he created instead a monster that will haunt us forever because big thinking is not a forte of anyone leading the legislature."

Anonymous said...

seems to me that the issues brought up here about the Property Appraisers office are all legitimate. There have been no comments about him personally just about the job his office is doing.

Comments were not campaign criticism but observations on the job that the first elected Property Appraiser is doing. If Broward does have a better model for valuing property than why not discuss it in this forum? I assume Mr. garcia wants to be re-elected to the same position. Arent decisions in his office's valuations (foreclosures, shortsales & appeals) germaine to that?

The Authors of this site are very good at weeding out the unfairness and or inequities in local government. I would argue that the Appraisal decisions of the MD Prop Appraisers office are just as important as other investigations published here because of the specific personal nature of what the valuations represent to individual property owners of this community.

Geniusofdespair said...

I agree with you, it wasn't as much with the substance as with the tone of the comments. I agree that this office is hard to get a straight answer from but Lopez Cantera??