Home Mortgage Facts

Below are some home mortgage facts that many people aren't aware of.

1. 35% of the homes in the U.S. do NOT have a mortgage.
   
   
2. 94.88% of all loans ARE performing (a loan on which principal
   and interest are less than 90 days past due).
   
   
3. The foreclosure problem in this country is really a story
   of seven states.
   
   
4. The BIGGEST foreclosure problems are in Michigan, Ohio,
   and Indiana. These are manufacturing states that experienced
   horrible job losses. Since 2001, Michigan has lost 300,000
   jobs. These states would have had problems no matter what
   the market conditions happened to be.
   
   
5. The other four states: Arizona, California, Florida, and
   Nevada--experienced significant overbuilding. Twenty-five
   per cent of the foreclosures in these states are on properties
   that are held by investors who were speculating.
   
   
6. ONLY 25% of all mortgages are subprime, and of these 75%
   are performing.
   
   
7. In the other 43 states, foreclosures have fallen in 2007 from
   2006 reported numbers. In California which is the predictor
   of what is to come in Florida, the following is being said……
   According to Leslie Young, chief economist for the California
   Assoc. of Realtors, (which mirrors what we are seeing here)
   that the areas being hardest hit in California are the outlying
   areas where there has been overbuilding. The resale market
   in California's major markets continues to be strong. In fact,
   the closer you are to a metropolitan area, the better the sales
   are. In the million-dollar plus price range, there has been
   essentially no change from 2006 to 2007.
   
   
   

Amit Bhuta
Real Estate Helper
Kendall Village Homes
(305) 439-3031
www.DadeCountyMLS.com

Foreclosure Update in Miami Dade and Broward County

Most of us have heard a lot about foreclosures in the news recently. An article in the Miami Herald today told us just how bad it has gotten recently. Below are some of the highlights from the article.

In Miami-Dade County, 20,475 foreclosures have been filed -- roughly one of every 32 homes. That's up from 9,814 foreclosures filed in all of 2006, according to court data. In Broward County, 20,812 foreclosures have been filed -- that's about one of every 30 homes.

Aside from mortgage fraud, adjustable-rate loans are the single largest culprit of what is happening here because interest rates really haven't gone up. For the state, new foreclosures filed in the three months ending Sept. 30 for all types of mortgages rose 49 percent from the previous three months to 1.09 percent, up from .73 percent of all outstanding loans, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's quarterly delinquency survey. Florida ranked fourth in the country in the number of new foreclosures filed according to that same survey.

The percentage of homeowners headed toward foreclosure because they're behind on their payments was 6.47 percent, higher than the national average of 5.81 percent. With all this bad news, what are some of the positives? The first thing is that Congress is working on a plan to freeze certain types of adjustable rate mortgages for the next five years. The plan is somewhat complex, and I am not going to go into detail about it here. If you are interested in getting more information, you can visit the following link, http://tinyurl.com/35umvq.

The other really good thing is that it is a great time to buy now. Also, people looking to sell their home and purchase a more expensive home are in a much better position now than they have been for years.

Amit Bhuta
Real Estate Helper
Kendall Village Homes
(305) 439-3031
www.DadeCountyMLS.com