The Foreclosure Tsunami

I know it’s been awhile since I have written on this Blog but there is a very good reason for that. I promised all of you that I would not write something here just for the sake of writing something on my Blog. That would just generate an email to all of you and I know very well how much junk we get every day in our email boxes. So my commitment to you is that I will only write when I have something valuable to say. And I do today!

I was in Las Vegas this past weekend and I was surprised to see how much the Real Estate Market has cooled over there. Foreclosures are at an all time high.

Foreclosure filings across the United States rose 47 percent last month from a year ago to 149,150 - one for every 775 households, according to statistics from Realty Trac Inc., a foreclosure listing service. And for the third straight month, Nevada's foreclosure rate led the nation when it rose 220 percent from a year earlier to 4,738 filings, or one in every 183 households.

In Clark County, which encompasses Las Vegas, one of every 30 homes began the process toward foreclosure last year.

New home builders are slowing down the pace of new projects in Las Vegas and are giving agents’ commissions of up to 12 percent and up to $100,000 in upgrades such as pools, granite countertops and appliances.

And the supply of available homes is growing.

In March, the number of resale listings for single family homes, condos and townhouses in the Las Vegas valley grew 30 percent from a year ago to 27,282, according to the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors. Sales and the value of homes sold were both down 38 percent from a year ago. About half the homes available have been on the market for more than two months.
However, there is hope because of Nevada's fast-growing population and an estimated 8,000 net new residents coming to Las Vegas every month, experts predict the glut of housing will be cleared in six months to more than a year.

State lawmakers are considering a range of bills that clamp down on the easy mortgage lending that helped heat up the market, including making it a crime for lenders to issue mortgages with little or no verification of a borrower's ability to pay.

"The biggest loan I ever saw, a person bought a $1 million property and only had to come up with $1,000 in cash," said Scott Bice, the state's commissioner of mortgage lending.

Can you imagine that? That’s one tenth of one percent!
And that seems to be the story throughout the USA.

One expert called the Real Estate downturn a Foreclosure Tsunami.

I just wonder no matter how great the economy is in Canada how long it will be before the market conditions over there in the US effect the market conditions here.

Real Estate Investment Warning

The general feeling in Alberta is that Real Estate is a tremendously safe investment and that even though prices are sky high they will continue to rise because of the fantastic economic conditions of the province. These economic conditions are mainly driven by oil and especially the Oil Sands Projects near Edmonton.

I know it is human nature to feel that when things are good that things will only get better – it’s called the Blue Sky Feeling. The other side of that is when things are bad one feels that things will never get better – that is called the Sky is Falling Feeling.

So when someone comes along and during A Blue Sky period and warns of potential storms on the horizon usually people call that person crazy. There were a few of these people during the Dot Com days and now there are a few of these people during these Real Estate Days. Donald Trump and Robert Allen and all those Real Estate gurus want you to spend thousands on their courses so they will never tell you the dangers of the Real Estate business. So just be aware that dangers do lurk in dark and ugly corners. Be careful!

Governments and World Events can quickly change the tide of Real Estate Prosperity. One company sounding the alarm already is UBS Securities Canada Inc. In an interview yesterday, UBS analyst Andrew Potter said the industry will have to absorb the cumulative impact of regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, plus possible federal and provincial changes to tax treatment of the projects.

You can read the rest of this in an article in the Global and Mail entitled: Growing political risks imperil oil sands profit, report says New pollution regulations, taxes cited.