More Investors & Less Homeowners Buy Short Sales
Short sales are on the rise and so are the investors purchasing them. The investor share of short sale purchases jumped from 26% to nearly 31% in the last six months. On the flip side, homeowners looking for a bargain by shopping these bank discounted homes have decided that they are not willing to wait out the extended bank approval time frames and unclear closing dates.
The HAFA Short Sale program attempts to resolve this waiting game by giving the banks 10 days to either approve or disapprove a short sale offer on a property. This is a great concept to speed the process up for buyers, and sell off distressed property but banks have not proven to stick to this 10 day guideline as of yet and nobody seems to be enforcing the HAFA guideline.
Investors are seeing these bank delayed short sales as an opportunity to score equity in a property, and are willing to play by the banks procedures to do so.
I currently have a house for sale in Phoenix, AZ listed as a short sale for $99,000. We just put it up for sale 11 days ago and have had three offers, all by LLC investors. No owner occupied buyers have shown an interest.
If you have ever wondered how many foreclosures have taken place in the recent years, then take a look at these numbers:
· 66,000 nationwide completed foreclosures in February, 2012
· 862,000 nationwide in the last 12 months
· 3.4 million foreclosures since September, 2008
· 1.4 million or 3.4% of homes with a mortgage are currently in foreclosure
According to Realtytrac - realtytrac.com – about 24% of all U.S. homes sales in the fourth quarter were somewhere in the foreclosure process. Distressed sales continue to hold a solid portion of market sales.
Although the foreclosure numbers are near record highs, they are showing improvement.
60 major markets have seen a decrease in their foreclosure rates compared to one year ago, says Anand Nallathambi CEO of CoreLogic – corelogic.com – a major online company which produces comprehensive data, analytics, and services for finance and real estate professionals.
Nallathambi also states that the combination of REO’s clearing faster, unemployment rate decreases and interest rates holding near all time lows, all are positive signs to a recovering housing economy.
