Every day I post negative news about the economy and the housing market. One day I hope to come in and share some good news with you. Today is not that day. A story from Reuters writer Lynn Adler this morning brings us more discouraging foreclosure news.
According to the article, foreclosures rose in nearly 75 percent of U.S. metro areas with populations of more than 200,000 in the first half of 2010. According to RealtyTrac, we are unlikely to see significant increases in home values until 2013. A quote from an interview with Rick Sharga, senior V.P. at RealtyTrac said:
“We’re not going to see meaningful, sustainable home price appreciation while we’re seeing 75 percent of the markets have increases in foreclosures. We’re not going to see real price appreciation probably until 2013. We don’t see a double dip in housing, but we think it’s going to be a long painful recovery for the next three years.”
The cities with the highest foreclosure rates are all concentrated in California, Nevada, Florida, and Arizona. This is unsurprising, as cities in these states underwent some of the greatest price inflation during the bubble years. According to Reuters, average home prices are 29 percent lower than at their 2006 peak. Additionally, we are on a pace to see an all-time high number of homes seized by banks this year.
Unemployment is running close to 10 percent, and wider measures of unemployment are near 16.5 percent. It does not appear that these numbers are going to come down any time soon. At the end of the day, unemployment is the root cause of nearly every other problem that our economy is facing. Until we make strides towards solving that problem, everything else we do is likely to be marginally effective at best.
Loading ...
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Leave a comment