USA Today Adds Foreclosure Listings To Real Estate Web Site

[OhioChick]

December 21, 2006 (1:23 PM EST)

USA Today has added foreclosure listings to its online real estate channel, providing contractors, home buyers, and others with potentially good deals.
Foreclosure.com is providing the paid listings, which are available on a co-branded page in USAToday.com. The site offers searching by state, ZIP code, or a foreclosure ID number. The service, launched Thursday, costs $9.95 a week.

USA Today is offering the service as foreclosures rise throughout the United States as a result of a deflating real estate market. People who bought homes under adjustable-rate mortgages are particularly vulnerable to foreclosure, experts say.

"Overall, foreclosures are rising throughout the United States, which creates tremendous investment opportunities for home buyers and investors," Brad Geisen, president and CEO of Foreclosure.com, said in a statement.
http://www.techweb.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196701487

[originalpckelly]

1. Awful.

How sad that people with a lot of money in the first place are going to take advantage of people with little. Robbing the poor and middle class once again.

[Deja Q]

2. But if they're all mcmansions,

they're all ripping themselves off in the end.

[slackmaster]

23. San Diego has become McMansion City

I think the trend is over, but it got pretty ridiculous. There are probably 10 or 12 "spec houses" within a block of my home.

One of them isn't actually a McMansion. Neighborhood consensus has declared it a McMausoleum.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Yeah. Just like the Depression.

We all heard about folks losing their farms, but nobody asks many questions about who GOT those farms.

[Speck Tater]

4. Put on your tinfoil hats and consider...

maybe the reason for all the low interest ARM's was to set up the suckers to be taken down so the market would crash letting the ones with cash laying around snatch up a bigger chunk of the real estate in the country. How better to set themselves up as the lords of the land over the serfs forced to rent on their terms.

[karlrschneider]

5. Legal loan sharks. They don't have to break arms any more, it's all covered by

the laws they helped to get passed. A court document is way easier and less bloody.

[flvegan]

6. No chance.

The lenders lose a pile of cash on a foreclosure. In Florida, it's anywhere from $10k to $100k easily.

[karlrschneider]

7. How do you figure that? They end up with all the equity plus whatever has been paid.

:eyes:

[flvegan]

8. Really? Let's take a walk...

So ABC loans $150k on a house. It's FNMA money. ABC gets 7 or 8 months worth of payments before default. At the moment of default, ABC stops getting paid. However, ABC STILL needs to write a check to FNMA. Blah, blah, blah. Foreclosure (in Florida) takes 160 days, minimum. That's what...5 months of interest paid out? Then, oh yes, then, when the Final Summary Jugment is entered, it's for the default, plus the legal fees, plus the violations/taxes/damage etc that has accrued. Then, after the eviction, they can market the property for sale. Oh, btw...the owners removed the fridge, oven, dishwasher, etc and trashed the place.

Market sucks. Let's talk about 6-10 months trying to sell a property. That's reality. How much did ABC just eat?

Equity nothing. That's how it USED to be.

12 years in the industry. Drop your eyesrolling smilie elsewhere, thanks.

[karlrschneider]

10. Okay, I stand corrected. I was going by personal experience in Florida in 1989.

Obviously things have changed and nobody told me. I bow to your superior up to date knowledge.

One thing I still don't get, given your facts, is why lenders are so overwhelmingly eager to make these loans...? Or is that also passe'?

[flvegan]

11. Not superior

just updated.

Why do they make these loans? Well, Google "subprime loan foreclosures" and you'll probably find a lot of good info that isn't specific to my state. Besides, many loans are made with the intent that withing a couple years, that they'll go from a fixed rate to an adjustable one. A lender can get 2 years at 10%. Tell me, how would you like a 10% return on an investment that was secured by the ONE thing that nobody can make more of? PLUS, out of every 100 loans made like this, 70-ish percent aren't failures.

This lending practice is no different than the crappy car loans nor the crappy credit cards that are marketed towards middle to lower income credit "risks" as mandated by the lenders.

Generate income, monthly. Worry about the defaults later. Plus, lenders are having bigger issues with foreclosures anyway. They aren't in the real estate business. That, and the problems that MERS is having securing real property after the fact...it's a big damn mess.

[NYC]

13. They've been selling mortgages.

I'm sorry I can't explain it to you. I read an article in Business Week a month or two or three ago.

The mortgage lenders "sell" their mortgages. The high risk mortgages are packaged together, and become securities for sale.

I don't remember all the details, but it was very interesting, and a lot of the places making the high risk mortgage loans in the first place, are not losing money.

See if you can find the Business Week article. It is well worth reading.

[cap]

18. except that ABC no longer owns the note

the originator has already sold that mortgage on the secondary market to another bank. That's why you have to keep changing the name of the bank that you are writing your check out to. That crappy mortgage is off the original lender's books.

On the secondary market those mortgages get bundled up into securities called CMO's that have already calculated the risk and adjusted the yield on those instruments. So the banks arent losing money, at least not yet. Someone will get stuck with a bunch of crappy mortgages and they are hoping that their value at risk (VAR) has been caluculated to cover the risk of default. There are a lot of derivatives and over collateralization to cover the risk. Some of these securities are worth it and some probably are just a bunch of paper.

There are so many layers to the mortgage game.

[slackmaster]

21. Property in the hands of a lender is a liability

The equity is down the drain. In order to make money off the property, it has to be fixed up and then either rented out or sold. The fixing up takes cash up front. The foreclosure process takes anywhere from 90 days to several months, depending on which state you are in. Meanwhile, the lender is responsible for paying property taxes, insurance, and upkeep as long as they own the property.

Because the lender does not want to be in the business of renting, they are motivated to sell. That pushes down the price they can get.

REO is not what banks want.

[Kingshakabobo]

9. Exactly!!!

Lenders lose big-time AND their credit rating suffers from too many bad loans.

Things are certainly tightening up in the market. For instance, "stated income" OR "liar loans" are getting harder to obtain fraudulently. The technology is now available for underwriters to pull, from the IRS, tax return transcripts prior to decisioning the loan.....versus after the loan closes (for quality control default investigation).

P.s. I'm a lender

edit to add: I type slow. I typed this while you were spelling it out for Karl......nice job....You are in the biz. too.

[flvegan]

12. You're a lender?

Title Underwriter here. Did the f/c gauntlet for a LONG time. You hear what I'm saying.

What this country needs, lending wise, is a good default resolution solution. Make the loan perform, regardless. Work it out, modify the loan, kick the default to the end...make the loan work.

[zann725]

15. Plus all the 'Reverse Mortgages' they're marketing big-time to the Elderly...

As if enough con-artists aren't already targeting the Elderly for ways to scam what pennies they have left in retirement years.

Now major ads ecourage the Elderly to give up the mortgage on their homes in exchange for "living comfortably" in their sunset years. Just think of all the Seniors who MUST and WILL do that...and all the houses and property that faceless corporate interests will quite soon own nationwide. The sheer number is mind-boggling...thinking of all these Elderly "reverse mortgaged" victims. Every time I hear one of those ads, it makes me so angry.

Not so long ago, Pensions and Social Security income...plus lifetime retiree Savings lost in that huge Savings & Loans debacle (courtesy also of Shrub crime family) "covered" the Elderly in their sunset years. Now however, odds are, most elderly WILL "buy" that much-touted Reverse Mortgage, losing all those homes and property to faceless corporate thieves nationwide.

[SpiralHawk]

16. Yes, the republicon real estate scam

you got it. This is a planned screw job.

Thanks a pantload, Commander AWOL & republicon cronies.

[crikkett]

17. Naw. 80% of new Silicon Valley jobs after the dot-com bust

were in the real estate industry. I think the low ARMs etc were to keep the economy going at home in the short term while we all sent our high-tech jobs to India and our dollars to China in exchange for plastic nothings, cheap steel and polar fleece sewn by sweatshop labor.

China, in turn, has to do something with all those dollars, so it invests in America: and funds the Iraq war.

That's why (IMO) George Bush told us all to go shopping. If we stop buying Chinese goods, China will not only stop funding the Iraq war but will call in its loans.

I think the opportunity to snap up foreclosures is just a side-effect. An opportunity to be sure, but still a side-effect.

[slackmaster]

20. No, foreclosures are definitely not what lenders want

The process is a money loser, especially when the property ends up owned by the lender, i.e. REO.

I worked for a bank for seven years, a mortgage banking data processing company for two, and my present job (another 2.5 years) involves related data.

[MadMaddie]

14. That can't be good...

[slackmaster]

19. USA Today providing foreclosure listings is inherently neither good nor bad

The underlying market conditions that it is a reaction to indicates that more homeowners than usual are going to be hurt. Industry analysts have known for many months that the cycle was coming around, as it has many times in the past.

[MadMaddie]

22. That's why I love DU I find out more information here then

anywhere else...you guys are great!!

:yourock:

[qwlauren35]

24. D*mn....

Why isn't this info FREE???????????????

Grrrr.

[slackmaster]

25. It is free (public domain)

You can get it all yourself for free, but you have to go in person to the Recorder's office for every jurisdiction you are interested in.

The reason companies like USA Today, foreclosures.com, etc. sell it is because they have done the leg work for you (or paid someone else to do it).