Hank Miller
In the metro Atlanta Real Estate market like a hound in the pantry…
Atlanta Tops in National REO Inventory, Georgia #3
Atlanta Top Metro Area for REO Inventory
On Wednesday, the Federal Housing Finance Agency began taking investor applications to participate in their new bulk REO program. The agency is finally deciding who has the financial wherewithal to manage these properties and rent them out. Well that’s been tried in the past and the results? uh…not good.
So where exactly are these REO homes? Look around because metro Atlanta has the highest number of any national metro area and Georgia is in the top 3 states. But….as has been often repeated here, the Atlanta foreclosure mess is highly concentrated in certain parts of the city. Atlanta is also at the top of the mortgage fraud arena, but again, highly concentrated. Candidly speaking, take these areas out of the mix and the metro Atlanta market is no worse than many others.
As noted in The Wall Street Journal:
The goal is to help stabilize the troubled housing market by turning properties into rental units. Similar programs are expected to be launched by Fannie Mae’s sibling company, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration, the government-controlled mortgage insurer. That pilot program would be limited to properties that Fannie has already leased through a program that allows tenants to rent homes when their landlords go into foreclosure. It involves real estate with an estimated value of at least $250 million in six areas: Southern California, Las Vegas, Chicago, Phoenix, Atlanta, and parts of Florida.
There are many more foreclosures that could be pooled into packages and sold to investors. More than 83,000 foreclosures were listed for sale by Fannie, Freddie or the Federal Housing Administration as of late December, with the largest concentrations in California, Georgia, Michigan and Florida. (View map.) The idea of packaging these properties and selling them to investors has been kicking around in policy circles for quite a while now and has been seriously discussed by Obama administration, Federal Reserve officials and regulators since at least last summer.
“We’re working to turn more foreclosed homes into rental housing, because as we know and a lot of families know, that empty house or ‘for sale’ sign down the block can bring down the price of homes across the neighborhood,” President Barack Obama said in a speech Wednesday in Virginia.
There’s really nothing much to say….except it’s uncanny how history repeats itself; I think we already know how this “innovative idea” will end. I can’t think about that right now as I have a foreclosure appraisal to write. It’s a fourplex in the city that looks like it took a few tomahawk missile strikes, not much left. The odd thing is the 300K mortgage taken less than a year ago – when it undoubtedly looked just like it does today. Mortgage fraud?
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Hound Dog is led by Hank Miller of The Hank Miller Team. He is a licensed broker and certified real estate appraiser in the state of GA. Since 1989, real estate has been his full time occupation and Hank consistently ranks at the very top of Atlanta area agents in overall production. He is known as much for his attention to detail as he is for his candor. READ MORE
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