A full 24 percent of homes for sale in the United States have had their price reduced at least once, a total of $27.1 billion in price cuts, according to a report released Thursday by real estate service Trulia Inc.

According to the Wall Street Journal, one in four home sellers have dropped the asking price on their home with an average price decrease of 10%.  According to real-estate Web site Trulia.com. More than one third of sellers reduced their asking prices in the top three cities: Jacksonville, Fla.; Portland, Ore.; and Milwaukee, Wisc. 

Luxury markets are experiencing a sharp increase in inventory.   Homes listed at $2 million and up offered an average 14% price reduction. If you would like more information on homes that have experienced a large discount throughout the Mecklenburg and surrounding counties, please complete the form below or call us today at 704-559-5988 x4.



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According to data released by RealtyTrac, there has been a 7% increase in foreclosures in July. This is also a 32% increase over last year. “July marks the third time in the last five months where we’ve seen a new record set for foreclosure activity,” said James Saccacio, RealtyTrac’s chief executive officer. “Despite continued efforts by the federal government and state governments to patch together a safety net for distressed homeowners, we’re seeing significant growth in both the initial notices of default and in the bank repossessions.” Over 360,000 households with loans received a foreclosure filing in July – the highest since January 2005.

Notices of default, auction or repossession have reached nearly 2.3 million in the first 7 months of this year. “There are a slew of factors showing fundamental weakness on the demand side: tighter underwriting, job loss, investors who’ve been badly burned,” said Stuart Gabriel, director of the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate. “We have not seen the bottom of the housing market.” The Obama administration’s program to tackle foreclosure has not been effective so far. Analysts say negative home equity, due to falling home prices, is encouraging borrowers to default on mortgage obligations. “It has been more profitable to put a home in foreclosure than restructure the loan,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial. “The only thing that helps is forgiveness of principal, and there is little willingness to do that.”

The National Association of Realtors chief economist Lawrence Yun states With low interest rates, lower home prices and a first-time buyer tax credit, we’ve been seeing healthy increases in home sales, which are a hopeful sign for the economy,”

What does that mean for our local real estate market?
It means that we will continually see more foreclosures, more short sales and an increase in higher priced foreclosures. If you would like a daily or weekly listing of foreclosures, please complete the form below.

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Jay Butler, director of the Realty Studies program at Arizona State University, concurs with this view. “This market is about as abnormal as the hypermarket that we came out of a few years ago,” said Butler. Experts say that the bidding wars will impede stabilization of the housing market.  Investors are knee deep into the bidding war, knowing some of the ingredients needed to win the bid.  The two main ingredients?  Cash with no contingencies.  They pay with cash, prefer to close within 2 weeks, have tenants available if the property will be a rental or a rehab crew available if the property needs work.   They ask for very little with the offer to purchase.

If you are interested in purchasing foreclosures.  Some aren’t for the newbie foreclosure buyer.  We had one foreclosure listed by 3pm with an accepted offer from the bank by 7pm that evening.  Buyers have to move fast, have funding available or verifiable and understand bank addendums.  Bank addendums often trump the standard offer to purchase contract, so read carefully before signing.

If you are a new buyer interested in reading and understanding some of the required documentation needed to be signed so that you can determine if buying a foreclosure is for you, give us a call at (704) 559-5988 X5.

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