Florida is still the No. 2 state in the nation, behind only California, for the number of foreclosures. And the Sunshine State's undesirable national ranking is not about to improve anytime soon.
Bradenton led all Sun Coast cities with 372 foreclosures in May, the most recent month for which data is available from RealtyTrac. Port Charlotte was No. 2 at 348 and North Port was close behind at No. 3 with 328 foreclosures.
The foreclosure pain is most acute in Florida and California because house flippers, dreaming of quick fortunes made from buying and selling homes fast, spent the past five years overinflating a property value balloon now burst by foreclosures, said Arthur Broslat, Re/Max Palm Realty land and investment property specialist.
"There are so many investor-owned properties working their way through the system," Broslat said. "So what's getting sold is the foreclosures. Banks are very aggressive about pricing those."
House flippers kept artificially inflating home values through rapid sales coupled with the expectation of ever-increasing home values, he said.
"In North Port, for example, there was a lot of speculative activity, people buying and holding homes with no intention of living in them," Broslat said. "They were going to flip them and become immensely wealthy."
Builders, offering nothing-down schemes, built about 500 houses in North Port, he said. An estimated 300 homes under construction in North Port were abandoned unfinished, said Carol Kozabo, property standards division manager in the North Port Building Department.
"CCI, a construction company that went bankrupt, was into that scheme," Broslat said. "Several companies were actively promoting that for little or nothing down, we'll build you a house."
North Port was hit with a perfect storm of easy home ownership terms colliding with an enviable location, he said.
"People in the construction business on the West Coast of Florida saw North Port was a convenient place to live," Broslat said. "You could get anywhere from Naples to Tampa in less than an hour in their pickup truck. Now they've gotten in their pickup truck and are someplace else."
Floridians and Californians are not alone in the foreclosure mess. Nearly three-quarters of a billion U.S. properties faced some sort of foreclosure action in the second quarter, according to the U.S. Foreclosure Market Report by RealtyTrac.com.
"Forty-eight of 50 states and 95 out of the nation's 100 largest metro areas experienced year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity in the second quarter," said RealtyTrac CEO James J. Saccacio.
Still, Florida and California are at the epicenter of the foreclosure shakeup. Cape Coral-Fort Myers was the hardest-hit metro area in the nation with one foreclosure filing for every 64 households, more than seven times the national average.
Florida's bank repossessions rose almost eightfold in July. Foreclosure filings in the Sunshine State rose 14 percent from June and 139 percent from July 2007. It's been more than two years since the number of U.S. foreclosures dropped from one quarter to the next.
Foreclosures are adding adding yet another downward pressure on home prices in addition to bloated inventory and reduced demand from an economy with a rising jobless rate.
The median price for a single-family home in the United States dropped 7.6 percent in the second quarter, the National Association of Realtors reported. The median sale price was $206,500, down from $223,500 a year ago, according to Chicago-based NAR.
Sales of single-family houses and condominiums fell 16 percent to 4.913 million -- a 10-year low.
Foreclosures and "short sales," where lenders lose money by letting a borrower sell for less than the mortgage balance, accounted for one-third of all U.S. housing sales in the quarter. Property values for people who live near a home repossessed by a lender will drop an average of $5,000, according to the Center for Responsible Lending in Durham, N.C.
There are signs of a turnaround in at least one formerly troubled state. Colorado, where the foreclosure rate ranked No. 1 among all states in 2006, set up a foreclosure hotline to help people. Colorado also gave homeowners more time to stop foreclosures.
Colorado's foreclosure rate is down to No. 5 in the second quarter after a 15 percent decrease in activity from the previous quarter.
"Foreclosure sales didn't really take off until early this year," Broslat said. "Now it's taking off like crazy. It's a big part of everybody's sales."
Bradenton led all Sun Coast cities with 372 foreclosures in May, the most recent month for which data is available from RealtyTrac. Port Charlotte was No. 2 at 348 and North Port was close behind at No. 3 with 328 foreclosures.
The foreclosure pain is most acute in Florida and California because house flippers, dreaming of quick fortunes made from buying and selling homes fast, spent the past five years overinflating a property value balloon now burst by foreclosures, said Arthur Broslat, Re/Max Palm Realty land and investment property specialist.
"There are so many investor-owned properties working their way through the system," Broslat said. "So what's getting sold is the foreclosures. Banks are very aggressive about pricing those."
House flippers kept artificially inflating home values through rapid sales coupled with the expectation of ever-increasing home values, he said.
"In North Port, for example, there was a lot of speculative activity, people buying and holding homes with no intention of living in them," Broslat said. "They were going to flip them and become immensely wealthy."
Builders, offering nothing-down schemes, built about 500 houses in North Port, he said. An estimated 300 homes under construction in North Port were abandoned unfinished, said Carol Kozabo, property standards division manager in the North Port Building Department.
"CCI, a construction company that went bankrupt, was into that scheme," Broslat said. "Several companies were actively promoting that for little or nothing down, we'll build you a house."
North Port was hit with a perfect storm of easy home ownership terms colliding with an enviable location, he said.
"People in the construction business on the West Coast of Florida saw North Port was a convenient place to live," Broslat said. "You could get anywhere from Naples to Tampa in less than an hour in their pickup truck. Now they've gotten in their pickup truck and are someplace else."
Floridians and Californians are not alone in the foreclosure mess. Nearly three-quarters of a billion U.S. properties faced some sort of foreclosure action in the second quarter, according to the U.S. Foreclosure Market Report by RealtyTrac.com.
"Forty-eight of 50 states and 95 out of the nation's 100 largest metro areas experienced year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity in the second quarter," said RealtyTrac CEO James J. Saccacio.
Still, Florida and California are at the epicenter of the foreclosure shakeup. Cape Coral-Fort Myers was the hardest-hit metro area in the nation with one foreclosure filing for every 64 households, more than seven times the national average.
Florida's bank repossessions rose almost eightfold in July. Foreclosure filings in the Sunshine State rose 14 percent from June and 139 percent from July 2007. It's been more than two years since the number of U.S. foreclosures dropped from one quarter to the next.
Foreclosures are adding adding yet another downward pressure on home prices in addition to bloated inventory and reduced demand from an economy with a rising jobless rate.
The median price for a single-family home in the United States dropped 7.6 percent in the second quarter, the National Association of Realtors reported. The median sale price was $206,500, down from $223,500 a year ago, according to Chicago-based NAR.
Sales of single-family houses and condominiums fell 16 percent to 4.913 million -- a 10-year low.
Foreclosures and "short sales," where lenders lose money by letting a borrower sell for less than the mortgage balance, accounted for one-third of all U.S. housing sales in the quarter. Property values for people who live near a home repossessed by a lender will drop an average of $5,000, according to the Center for Responsible Lending in Durham, N.C.
There are signs of a turnaround in at least one formerly troubled state. Colorado, where the foreclosure rate ranked No. 1 among all states in 2006, set up a foreclosure hotline to help people. Colorado also gave homeowners more time to stop foreclosures.
Colorado's foreclosure rate is down to No. 5 in the second quarter after a 15 percent decrease in activity from the previous quarter.
"Foreclosure sales didn't really take off until early this year," Broslat said. "Now it's taking off like crazy. It's a big part of everybody's sales."
TOP 5 FORECLOSURE STATES
Rank State Foreclosures
1 - California 587,157
2 - Florida 273,857
3 - Ohio 121,487
4 - Texas 88,732
5 - Arizona 88,148
Rank State Foreclosures
1 - California 587,157
2 - Florida 273,857
3 - Ohio 121,487
4 - Texas 88,732
5 - Arizona 88,148
