Tagged: housing

Analysts expected a big jump in home foreclosures in Michigan in January.  But the jump didn’t materialize.

 Home foreclosures slowed last fall in Michigan and around the country as banks dealt with a scandal about robo-signings.   Essentially mortgage lenders signing foreclosure documents without checking to make sure what they were signing was accurate or truthful.  Foreclosures were expected to spike this month.  But they didn’t.  Realty Trac reports Michigan saw only a 4% increase in foreclosure filings in January.   Nationally only a one  percent increase.

2010 was the worst year in a decade for home foreclosures in Michigan, according to new data out today.   And 2011 is expected to be worse.  

One in 33.    That’s how many Michigan homes received a foreclosure notice in 2010.   

 Realty Trac ranks Michigan as having the 7th worst home foreclosure rate in the nation last year. Daren Bloomquist is with Realty Trac.    He says Michigan’s foreclosure numbers should be worse this year. 

Michigan home prices continue their downward slide and the trend shows little sign of stopping.

Home prices in Michigan declined about 9% in the third quarter, a downward trend that started in April as government buying incentives began to dry up.

Fewer people bought formerly foreclosed homes in Michigan in the third quarter of the year. 

Federal home buyer tax credits spurred home sales in Michigan and the rest of the country during the first half of the year.  Daren Bloomquist with Realty Trac says July through September home sales slumped without those incentives.  He says Michigan’s foreclosed home sales dipped 26%.

Bloomquist says:

Some of the sales you would have seen in the third quarter were pushed forward to the second quarter.  So, there was a little artificial inflation in those numbers. These numbers in the third quarter are a little bit lower than normal.

People who bought one of the 95 hundred formerly foreclosed homes that sold in Michigan in the third quarter of the year got a good deal.  The average sale price was about 41% cheaper than similar homes sold at the same time.

More houses are coming down in Flint. Kristin Longley reports in the Flint Journal that 174 houses will come down by December 31st. That's on top of the 125 houses city crews are expected to take down by the end of the year.

Flint union leader Sam Muma says city crews can't take down all the homes scheduled for demolition:

"There's no way the crews I represent, the city employees, can handle all that. We have a situation quite unique in our time."