WaPo: Delinquent Properties Could End Good News For Housing Market

• March 12th 2010

by Mark Wellborn

The Washington Post had a sobering article in today’s paper about the millions of delinquent properties in the U.S. that have yet to be foreclosed on, and the effect that these properties could eventually have on the country’s housing market.

According to the Post, approximately “5 million to 7 million properties are potentially eligible for foreclosure but have not yet been repossessed and put up for sale.” If these properties come on the market en masse, housing prices would drop across the country and the wave of good news about the progress that the housing market has been making would likely end for awhile.

From The Post:

“Some of the positive housing data may not be signaling a true turning point, as many servicers are holding back on foreclosures and the related houses are not yet being offered for sale,” said Diane Westerback, a managing director at Standard & Poor’s.

Data released Thursday by RealtyTrac illustrate the dynamic. While banks repossessed fewer homes in February than a month earlier, borrowers continued to fall behind on their payments, adding to the inventory of properties headed toward foreclosure that have yet to be put on the market, said Daren Blomquist, RealtyTrac’s spokesman.

The article notes that the DC area has an inventory of about 67,000 foreclosed properties that have yet to hit the market, a number that is slightly higher than the national average, but nowhere near as bad as cities like Orlando and Miami.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/wapo_delinquent_properties_could_end_good_news_for_housing_market/1870.