Short sales, foreclosure, and the housing market.

[pureaudio]

No one has mentioned the people who are upside down in their loans cause when the market was great they "cashed out equity" and refinanced their home because, they had a mortgage for a house that appreciated, so they took the appreciation out of the property and blew it. I worked doing IT for a mortgage brokerage and couldnt believe some of the mortgage brokers were ex-cons and felons. Basically a bunch of thugs in a boiler room preying on peoples greed. I'm happy to say that the assholes that were running the operation (I worked there in Boca Raton for 2 weeks and saw the shit that was going on and quit, but not before they were asking me to "fix" appraisals for shitty properties that wouldnt have gotten a loan at all.) are in jail for fraud now. But the TopDot company is still around, and the massive fraud committed with mortgage loans probably still continues.

Don't be to quick to judge everyone who owes more than there house is worth. I've never greedily refinanced, or refinanced at all for that matter, for that extra equity, housing prices plummeted. I'm not the only one in that boat either.

[quikveedb2]

Don't be to quick to judge everyone who owes more than there house is worth. I've never greedily refinanced, or refinanced at all for that matter, for that extra equity, housing prices plummeted. I'm not the only one in that boat either.

qft! there are tons of responsible homeowners out there that are upside down on their homes! i wonder what the solution is going to be, obviously banks are not using their bailouts to help these people.

[Philipangoo]

My family has been in real estate for a long time. We have always owned commercial but jumped into residential the past 10 years. The housing market is ridiculous. Its upsetting to see how many families have been foreclosed struggling to make payments because they took some "attractive" financing and only put like 10% down or less in some cases. Especially in the high end home market, I have seen a huge fluctuation of foreclosures. Distressed sales in several neighborhoods occurred like 2x more then a normal sales this past 12 months, which made it pretty difficult when doing property tax protests.

But hey, if you've got the cash now is the time to strike. Some investors are even buying gold now.

[quikveedb2]

I'm living in a resort town currently, where most homes are 2nd or vacation properties, so the housing market has not been affected quite so drastically. however, the full time residents have seen a huge drop in property value, which will not be recovered for quire some time, and a fair amount of 2nd homeowners have listed their properties, just "to get a line in the water" so to speak, further flooding the market and devaluing everything. now is definitely the time to buy if you're in the right spot!

the denver & front range distressed property market is HUGE! more than the current short sale agencies can handle, we're trying to streamline the process in my company to be able to handle the volume present, but the lack of efficiency in bank foreclosure & short sale processes means one property can take 6-12 months to go through the wringer. it's frustrating to say the least!