Foreclosure Listings Blog

Several residential and commercial beach development projects in Ventura County, California are on foreclosure property listings. These distressed properties have loans that went back three years ago.

According to industry experts, these foreclosed properties are part of foreclosures and bankruptcies that flooded the tri-county real estate development market. They said that the projects were started years before the crash of the financial market.

Wells Fargo is preparing to take over the control for the Bungalows at Beach House development project which consists of 64 single-family houses and 86 townhouses in Port Hueneme.

According to the lawsuit filed by Wells Fargo before the Ventura County Superior Court, the project’s developer, WL Homes owes the bank over $10 million of the almost $37.5 million mortgage it took out two years ago.

In February, WL Homes filed for a Chapter 11 bankrupty, listing almost $1.4 billion assets and about $937 million in liabilities. The case was later on converted to liquidation from reorganization.

The bankruptcy filing delayed Wells Fargo’s plan to take control of the project. The property was used as loan collateral by WL Homes. Last month, a bankruptcy judge approved Wells Fargo’s foreclosure action against WL Homes because the latter lacked equity on the property.

Port Hueneme community development director Greg Brown said that the city is willing to coordinate and work with the property’s new owner to complete the project.

Meanwhile, Channel Islands Building and Development has filed for Chapter 7, listing assets totaling to $6.6 million and liabilities of $19.5 million.

According to filings in the bankruptcy court, Channel Islands was constructing 18 homes and 67 residential communities. It also has control on 18 industrial condominium projects. Channel Islands President David O. White Jr. said that the company was forced to file for bankruptcy because of market crashes and project delays.

One of Channel Islands’ creditors is Los Padres Bank which listed claims of $7 million for the Channel Islands projects. White explained that the delays in market delivery combined with the collapse of the real estate market have proven to be economically catastrophic for the company.

Other notable residential and commercial development projects that are suffering under the credit crisis and facing foreclosures are the Chapala One condominium-and-commercial in Santa Barbara and the Vaquero de los Robles luxury resort.

The 2008 Consumer Complaint Survey Report showed that the top three complaints in 2008 remained unchanged since 2007. Home improvements and construction, automobile care and collection of credit and debt still receive the highest number of complaints from consumers last year and the year before.

According to the report, a growing number of complaints were filed against fraudulent foreclosure prevention services in 2008. The rise in the number of foreclosed property across the country has left many homeowners desperate to save their properties from foreclosure, making them vulnerable to unscrupulous people.

Los Angeles County Department of Consumer Affairs director Pastor Herrera Jr. said that fraudulent foreclosure prevention services were so bad and rampant that the category could top the list of consumer complaints this year. He said that desperate homeowners would do anything to save their properties from foreclosure listings.

Consumer Federation of America’s consumer protection director Susan Grant agrees with Herrera, adding that the worst thing that could happen to anybody is to lose their properties to foreclosures and to have someone pretend that they are trying to help save distressed properties.

The report surveyed 34 agencies which logged over 265,000 consumer complaints. According to the report, many consumer protection agencies reduced the number of their staff amid the worsening recession which spawned an increase in fraudulent foreclosure prevention schemes and debt collection. The cut in the workforce meant a reduction in the number of consumers that could be helped by these agencies.

Issues related to landlords and tenants rose to the eighth spot in 2008 from the 10th position in 2007. Meanwhile, complaints on health-related products and services replaced landlord and tenant issues in the 10th spot.

Some agencies reported a substantial increase in the number of consumer complaints they received last year. The Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs in Georgia said that consumer complaints filed on its office last year rose by almost 50 percent.

Additionally, consumer complaints in Orange County, Florida increased by 45 percent. Florida is one of the top 10 states in the country with a high number of foreclosed homes.

The report stated that consumer agencies, both state and local, were swamped with credit/debt collection-related complaints. Some of these complaints involved billing disputes, fee disputes, predatory lending, fraudulent foreclosure prevention schemes, mortgage fraud, debt settlement, abusive or illegal collection tactics and credit repair.

The Wisconsin State Assembly Taskforce on Preventing Home Foreclosure held a video conference between residents in Sauk County and legislators in Madison to discuss ways to contain the growing foreclosed homes listing in the area.

Several Baraboo residents testified before the taskforce during a video conference held at the University of Wisconsin-Baraboo/Sauk County campus. The local end of the video conference was organized by Baraboo Democrat, 42nd District Assemblyman Fred Clark.

According to Clark, he was surprised that Sauk and neighboring counties have one of the highest foreclosed homes listing in Wisconsin. He explained that Sauk is a part of a group of counties in the northern area of the state, which include Marquette and Columbia, which is experiencing an increase in foreclosure activity.

One Baraboo resident who testified during the video conference said that she tried to discuss with her lender possible ways for her to avoid losing her home to foreclosure. However, she later learned that her lender was pursuing to foreclose her home. She said that she does not want to go the route of bankruptcy and she knows that she could protect her property from foreclosed homes listing if given a lower loan payment.

According to appraiser Bob Greenwood, home damages caused by last year’s floods have been the major cause of the surge of foreclosures in Baraboo. He explained that many properties in the area that have been damaged by floods were foreclosed because they are no longer livable. He added that homeowners stop making payments on their homes because it is useless to spend more money on properties that are no longer worth living in.

Greenwood pointed out that he supports policies that could help distressed homeowners remain in their properties. But he believed that legislators should not encourage people to renege on their mortgage payments.

He said that the coverage of the foreclosure prevention program is so all-encompassing that homeowners who can afford to pay their mortgages delay making payments because they know that there will be no penalties. Greenwood said that this practice would only add more burdens on financially-strapped lenders.

According to Tom Kriegl, county supervisor, Baraboo’s dairy farmers are in the immediate danger of going into foreclosure due to the drop in milk prices.

Assemblyman Michael Young has proposed a law that will allow a 90-day reprieve from foreclosed homes listing for homeowners who will undergo mediation with lenders.

The three-year-old nonprofit community land trust, Na Hale O Maui in Hawaii is set to receive an estimated $3 million grant from the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) to be used to purchase properties on foreclosure home list, renovate them into affordable housing and sell them to eligible homeowners.
Upon receipt of the federal grant, the [...]

The number of New York homes to enter repo homes lists in the coming months is expected to increase significantly, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
GAO based its prediction on the number of subprime loans taken out in New York during the housing peak and the number of loans approved even with incomplete [...]

The foreclosure property listings in Charlotte, North Carolina have been growing considerably as more and more lenders filed foreclosure cases against commercial buildings in the area.
The recent victim is the Childress Klein Properties which received a notice of foreclosure from Reassure American Life Insurance.The lender notified Childress that its 11-year-old, 29,000 square feet office-park [...]

Bargain-hunting homebuyers are expected to flock at bank foreclosed home listings auctions in North California, which will be held from July 20 to August 2.
Sales of foreclosure properties have been increasing unabated in California, one of the states severely affected by the foreclosure crisis. And the high number of bank foreclosed home listings has [...]

Sales from foreclosed homes listings and other pre-owned listings in Florida increased in June, based on statewide residential real estate sales data for the month of June.
The June sales increase marked the tenth straight month of home resales increase on a year-over-year basis. Total sales of pre-owned condos also increased in June.
Across Florida, [...]

U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke projected that foreclosed home list, along with unemployment, will peak in the last six months of this year. He made this projection after he noted that the country’s effort to control recession is starting to show some progress and that the pace of the economic downturn is slowing down. [...]

Foreclosure is still a force to reckon with in Massachusetts despite the decline in the number of properties on foreclosure listing in some areas in the state. Foreclosure rates vary from one community to another but the bottom line is, foreclosure properties are still very much in evidence in the state.
The number of properties on [...]