Michael Sasso | Tribune Staff |
“An encouraging jump in home prices in the Sunshine State belies a more troubling fact below the surface: the number of foreclosed homes in banks’ possession keeps rising.
RealtyTrac, a national firm that lists foreclosed homes for sale, estimates that 83,238 homes in Florida currently are classified as “real estate owned,” which means they’ve been returned to the lender’s possession. That’s up from roughly 73,000 homes a year ago and about 62,000 homes in September 2011.
RealtyTrac estimates lenders own 9,214 homes in the Tampa Bay area. Two years ago, they owned about 5,100, the company said.
Realtors say there are many reasons for the continued climb in bank-owned homes, including that people are still defaulting on their loans and many banks are unwilling to dump their homes for a steep loss.
The fact that lenders aren’t rushing to sell off all their homes isn’t such a bad thing, said John Lum, a Tampa developer who owns a south Tampa new homes gallery.
“It’s helping to not flood the market with excess inventory,” Lum said.
Overall, the foreclosure rate in Florida and the Tampa Bay area has tapered off in recent months. That’s partly because of a new state law that is supposed to speed up Florida’s perennially slow foreclosure process.
Ironically, though, the law actually has temporarily slowed down things, because banks now have to provide more documentation that they hold the promissory note and are authorized to foreclose on a home.
For example, 948 homeowners in the Bay area got a first-time foreclosure notice in September, which is down by about 13 percent from August and down by more than half since September 2012, RealtyTrac data show.
But where first-time foreclosure filings are down, the number of bank repossessions has been fairly consistent at around 1,000 per month in the Bay area over the past year.
Today, banks and the government-sponsored entities such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are flush with more than 80,000 homes statewide that they either can’t sell or don’t want to sell. In some cases, lenders may not want to take a major loss by selling their real-estate owned, or REO properties.”