Shocking: Graduates with loans perform better than those without

Posted on May 14, 2015 by grim

From HousingWire:

TransUnion: Student loans do not impact housing

Despite the level of student loan debt rising to well above $1 trillion, young buyers are not being inhibited from obtaining a mortgage due to their debt, according to a new report from TransUnion.

According to the latest report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, student loan debt rose $32 billion in the first quarter to $1.19 trillion total, but recent reports from Capital Economics have suggested that growing amount of student debt isn’t actually preventing millennials from buying a home.

A new report from TransUnion shows that not only are younger consumers with student debt able to get a mortgage, they are also quite adept at making their payments as well.

According to the TransUnion report, consumers between the ages of 18 and 29 with a student loan in repayment are “generally able” to gain access to new loans and perform as well or better on those new loans as similarly aged consumers without student loans.

The study also showed that in only three to six years, student-loan consumers in their twenties have been observed to pass similarly aged consumers without a student loan in overall loan participation rates on mortgages, auto loans and credit cards, an act the study calls the convergence point.

“Going to school impacts young consumers’ access to credit; while in school, students may be less likely to have a job and generate the income necessary for loan approval. However, most catch up once they leave school—and their ability to catch up has not changed over the past decade,” said Steve Chaouki, executive vice president and the head of TransUnion’s financial services business unit. “Our study demonstrates that consumers in their 20s with student loans in repayment—that is, once they finish school—are in fact able to access credit at levels similar to or better than their peers who do not have student loans.”

Posted in Demographics, Economics, Employment, Mortgages | 185 Comments

41st consecutive month of foreclosure inventory declines

Posted on May 13, 2015 by grim

From DSNews:

Foreclosure Inventory, Completions Continue Decline Toward Pre-Crisis Levels

Completed foreclosures experienced another substantial year-over-year decline in March, moving even further away from their peak from nearly five years ago, according to CoreLogic’s March 2015 National Foreclosure Report released on Tuesday.

Foreclosure inventory also fell substantially year-over-year in March, declining by 25.7 percent down to about 542,000 mortgages (about 1.4 percent of all mortgages nationwide) – marking the 41st consecutive month of year-over-year declines, according to CoreLogic. In March 2014, there were about 729,000 residential homes, or 1.9 percent of mortgages nationwide, that were in some stage of foreclosure.

The number of completed foreclosures, which are an indicator of homes actually lost to foreclosure, totaled 41,000 for March 2015 – a decline of 15.5 percent from the previous March (48,000) and of about 65 percent from their peak experienced in September 2010.

The number of mortgages in serious delinquency (those 90 days or more overdue or in foreclosure or REO) fell year-over-year by 19 percent in March, down to about 1.5 million mortgages, representing 3.9 percent of all mortgages nationwide. March’s serious delinquency rate of 3.9 percent is the lowest since May 2008.

“We are seeing additional improvement in housing market conditions due to a decline in the serious delinquency rate to 3.9 percent, far below the peak of 8.6 percent in early 2010,” said Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. “Despite the decline in the number of loans that are 90 days or more delinquent or in foreclosure, the percent of homeowners struggling to keep up is still well above the pre-recession average of 1.5 percent.”
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The state with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12-month period from April 2014 to March 2015 was Florida with 110,000, followed by Michigan (50,000), Texas (34,000), and Georgia and Ohio with 28,000 each. South Dakota had the lowest number of completed foreclosures for that same period with 16, followed by the District of Columbia (87), North Dakota (326), West Virginia (462) and Wyoming (517).

The state with the highest percentage of foreclosure inventory for March was New Jersey (5.3 percent), followed by New York (3.9 percent), Florida (3.3 percent), Hawaii (2.7 percent), and the District of Columbia (2.5 percent). States with the lowest foreclosure inventory in March were Alaska (0.3 percent), Nebraska (0.4 percent), and North Dakota, Montana, and Colorado at 0.5 percent each.

Posted in Economics, Foreclosures, Housing Recovery, National Real Estate | 112 Comments

Access to credit holding back first time buyers? (Not student loans)

Posted on May 12, 2015 by grim

From HousingWire:

What’s holding back first-time homebuyers

The rising burden of student debt doesn’t explain the weakness in home sales to first-time buyers, so the question arises what is holding this segment back?

Capital Economics says that some of the cyclical factors holding back demand have eased, and despite the conventional wisdom, there is no evidence to suggest that homeownership aspirations amongst young households have diminished in recent years.

“This suggests that factors such as credit scoring and risk aversion amongst lenders may be mostly to blame for the weakness in home sales to first-time buyers,” says chief property economist Ed Stansfield.

Stansfield and his analysts re-examined the issue, and in a client note explain how they took it back to basics.

“One possibility is that young people nowadays simply have less desire to own a home. This could reflect the increasing geographical mobility required in modern careers, the fact that they have lived through the biggest housing crash on record, or because renting is seen as more affordable. Our calculations suggest housing is now slightly overvalued compared to rents,” he says. “Nonetheless, there doesn’t appear to have been a fundamental shift in homeownership aspirations. The most recent survey data suggest that nine out of ten people still see homeownership as a key part of the American dream.”

Furthermore, they found, there is no evidence to suggest that young households should have particular difficulty in affording a home.
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“…[I]t seems more likely that potential first-time buyers are being especially constrained by continued difficulties in obtaining credit,” he writes. “(They) are generally reliant on mortgage financing, but many will have little or no credit history and the means to make only small down payments on a home.”

Posted in Housing Recovery, Mortgages, National Real Estate | 187 Comments

“Location, location…” – Looks like the truth?

Posted on May 10, 2015 by grim

From the Record:

Price gap hinders housing recovery across North Jersey

Andrea and Joe Buccino bought their first home, a Cape Cod in Wallington, for $385,000 in 2005. A decade later, they put it on the market for $299,000 — one of many examples of how home values in North Jersey, like much of the nation, have struggled to recover since being slashed in the Great Recession.

An analysis of 2014 property sales data by The Record found that prices across most of Bergen and Passaic counties saw virtually no change last year. Overall in Bergen County, the median price of $405,000 remains 14.7 percent below the 2006 median peak of $475,000; Passaic County’s median is still off 25 percent, at $285,000. (Nationally, prices are about 16 percent below their peaks.)

And the slow recovery is most dramatic in the region’s lower-income, lower-priced housing markets.

At the top end of the market, in towns where the median value was at least $700,000 in 2006, prices are about 11 percent below their peaks. Homes in the middle range of values are about 17 percent off their peaks.

But at the lower end — in towns like Hackensack, Wallington, Garfield and Paterson — values held down by a greater concentration of foreclosures and distressed sales have barely recovered. They continue to languish 30 percent below their peaks — 26 percent if you take out Paterson and Passaic, where housing distress has been especially acute.

In actual dollars and cents, the housing troubles translate into median prices that are down in Paterson from $340,000 in 2006, to $185,000 in 2014; from $330,000, to $205,000 in Hackensack; $410,000, to $281,000 in Garfield; $380,000, to $250,000 in the city of Passaic; $423,000, to $260,000 in Wallington; and $410,000, to $300,000 in Elmwood Park.

At the high end of the market, the numbers tell a much different story. The median price in Ridgewood, for example, has climbed back to $685,000, near the 2006 peak of $710,000. In Ho-Ho-Kus, the median price in 2014 was $725,000, compared with $750,000 in 2006. While in Englewood Cliffs, the 2014 median of $1.1 million surpassed the $1.09 million median in 2006. Saddle River’s 2014 median of $1.5 million is approaching 2006’s $1.71 million. And agents in those towns describe the market as hot.

Posted in Economics, Housing Bubble, New Jersey Real Estate | 86 Comments

Overpaying millennials driving up rents?

Posted on May 9, 2015 by grim

From HousingWire:

Rents rise as millennials keep forking over the cash

Rent.com conducted a survey of 1,000 millennial renters to find out how they are planning their next move, finding more than half (57%) rank affordability as the most important factor when choosing an apartment. Yet when asked, 55% said they are willing to spend up to $150 more per month in order to stay in an apartment they love. Nearly one in four respondents (24%) are willing to shell out an additional $400 a month, just to keep their pad.

And looking at industry trends, they might have to pay that extra money soon.

Real Property Management and RentRange’s latest data report found that through the first quarter 2015, the average monthly rent for single-family homes was $1,286, representing a 5.4% year-over-year increase. The rental market data was limited to three-bedroom single-family homes in the U.S.

“Rental rates are up throughout the country and we expect that trend to continue in the near future,” said Don Lawby, President of Property Management Business Solutions, the franchisor of Real Property Management. “There are a lot of economic indicators supporting that viewpoint, not the least of which is America’s continual shift toward renting.”
…
But can millennials actually afford to be spending as much money?

Going back the rent.com, it seems that the millennial heart and head are at odds.

Despite their desire for affordable apartments above all else, 22% of millennials are spending up to 40% of their annual income on rent.

In order to afford living, more than one in three millennial renters (39%) reported getting some financial help, with 24% turning to their parents for additional support, 9% receiving financial support from the government and 6% depending on the kindness of others.

Posted in Demographics, Economics, National Real Estate | 24 Comments

Buy or Rent driving Wealth Inequality?

Posted on May 8, 2015 by grim

From CNBC:

The Wealth Gap Is Expanding as More People Rent, Study Says

For the majority of American homeowners, their house is their single largest asset. Despite the crash in home values in the last decade, that still holds true.

That crash, however, created a much larger share of renters, and these Americans are not enjoying the new wealth that now-rising home prices afford. Ninety percent of metropolitan housing markets have seen a decline in their homeownership rates, while home values are rising and incomes are flat, and that is widening the wealth gap, according to a new study by the National Association of Realtors, which looked at homeownership, home values and income growth from 2000 to 2013.

“Homeownership plays a pivotal role in the U.S. economy and has historically been one of the primary sources of wealth accumulation for middle-class families,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors.

“Unfortunately, due to an underperforming labor market, insufficient housing supply and overly stringent underwriting standards since the recession, homeownership has plunged to a rate not seen in over two decades,” Yun added. “As a result, the country has become more unequal as the number of homeowners has fallen while the number of renters has significantly risen.”
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There is also a new asset class of single-family rental homes, the outgrowth of the housing crash, when investors swooped in and bought up millions of distressed properties.

This provided even more options and incentives for people to rent, especially those with families who want to live in good school districts. Now, as home prices rise again, none of these renters are now experiencing any of the wealth growth their homeowner neighbors are; they are instead seeing increases in monthly rent charges, which detracts from wealth.
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“Changes in wealth during this period are especially profound in high-cost metro areas that have seen robust price growth,” added Yun. “For instance, a typical homeowner in San Jose, California, enjoyed an increase of $210,671 in housing wealth, while renters were left behind and likely exposed to annual rent increases.”

The wealth gap is increasing most in the largest metropolitan markets, like New York and Los Angeles, but it is happening everywhere. In the Kansas City metropolitan area, the homeownership rate dropped by more than 3 percent between 2010 and 2013, but the change in wealth for homeowners grew by almost $20,000. That’s $20,000 in wealth that renters did not see.

The study also showed that income inequality, based on the Gini index, a measure created by the World Bank, is widening as well. That is exacerbating the wealth gap in certain metro markets as well. For instance, Miami has the third-highest income gap in the nation.

At the same time, the homeownership rate fell by 3.3 percent from 2000 to 2013, while homeowners gained more than $50,000 in household wealth, due to rising home values. Renters, who were likely already on the lower-income side, saw none of those gains.

The newfound popularity of renting among young millennials may come back to bite them, as the gap continues to widen. That divide is also certain to have political ramifications, as candidates for the 2016 presidential election shape their platforms on unemployment and homeownership, at the same time courting the all-important millennial vote.

Posted in Demographics, Economics, National Real Estate | 71 Comments

Mortgage delinquency becoming a non-issue, except in NJ

Posted on May 7, 2015 by grim

From HousingWire:

MBA: Mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures drop in 1Q

The delinquency rate for mortgage loans on one-to-four-unit residential properties decreased to a seasonally adjusted rate of 5.54% of all loans outstanding at the end of the first quarter of 2015.

This was the lowest level since the second quarter of 2007. The delinquency rate decreased 14 basis points from the previous quarter, and 57 basis points from one year ago, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Delinquency Survey.

The delinquency rate includes loans that are at least one payment past due but does not include loans in the process of foreclosure.

The percentage of loans in the foreclosure process at the end of the first quarter was 2.22%, down five basis points from the fourth quarter of 2014 and 43 basis points lower than the same quarter one year ago. This was the lowest foreclosure inventory rate since the fourth quarter of 2007.

“The latest decline in the share of households suffering mortgage payment problems provides more evidence that the housing market is slowly normalizing,” said Ed Stansfield, chief property economist for Capital Economics. “To the extent that it encourages lenders to ease credit conditions and make more loans, it’s also positive news for mortgage market activity.”
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The serious delinquency rate, the percentage of loans that are 90 days or more past due or in the process of foreclosure, was 4.24%, a decrease of 28 basis points from the previous quarter, and a decrease of 80 basis points from the first quarter of 2014.

“Delinquency rates and the percentage of loans in foreclosure continued to fall in the first quarter and are now at their lowest levels since 2007,” said Joel Kan, MBA’s Associate Vice President of Industry Surveys and Forecasting. “The job market continues to grow, and this is the most important fundamental improving mortgage performance. Additionally, home prices continued to rise, as did the pace of sales, thus increasing equity levels and enabling struggling borrowers to sell if needed.”
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At the state level, 27 states saw a decline in foreclosure inventory rates over the quarter. New Jersey, New York, and Florida had the highest percent of loans in foreclosure in the nation in the first quarter. Florida’s foreclosure inventory rate peaked at 14.5% in 2010, and was down to 4.8% in the most recent quarter, helped by rapidly improving local economies and job markets, leading to increased housing demand, strong home price growth, and more opportunities for distressed loans to be resolved.

On the other hand, New Jersey’s percentage of loans in foreclosure peaked at 9% in 2013, and even though the rate has decreased in recent quarters to 7.7%, improvement has been slow relative to other states due to New Jersey’s long foreclosure timelines and a less robust housing market. Foreclosure starts increased in 26 states, but this measure has become more volatile with state-level mediation requirements and changing servicing procedures dictating changes from quarter to quarter.

Posted in Foreclosures, Mortgages, New Jersey Real Estate | 67 Comments

NJ houses to get more expensive

Posted on May 6, 2015 by grim

From the Star Ledger:

All new houses would be required to have sprinklers, under bill on Christie’s desk

The deadline for Gov. Chris Christie to sign or veto legislation that would require every new single or two-family home built in New Jersey to have a sprinkler system is Thursday.

Today, a coalition of fire safety officials and union heads joined the bill’s sponsor, Assemblyman John Wisniewski, to urge Christie to sign it.

“Of all the reasons to support this bill, the most compelling is also the simplest: Fire sprinklers prevent injuries and save lives,” Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) said.

The bill (A1698) passed the Legislature in March nearly along party lines, with most Democrats supporting it and most Republicans opposing it. It passed once before in January 2014, at the end of the last two-year legislative session. But it died when Christie failed to take action on it before the session expired in what’s called a “pocket veto.”

Wisniewski said the requirement would add about $4,000 to the cost of a 2,000 square foot home.

“I think about that number. A $4,000 investment on a structure that usually runs about $400,000. It’s a small fraction of the overall cost,” he said, adding that many insurance companies will offer discounts for homes with sprinklers.
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Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick (R-Union) said most Republicans opposed the bill because it would add to the cost of housing.

“In New Jersey, where things are so expensive, we don’t want to mandate another cost that will be passed down to the buyer,” he said. “We were concerned about more mandates, more costs and consequently more regulations with respect to families buying homes.”

Posted in New Development, New Jersey Real Estate | 54 Comments

Negative Equity at the Top? Not in NJ.

Posted on May 5, 2015 by grim

Sorry folks, finally we have the data to show it. Negative equity simply isn’t prevalent at the top-end of the market. From Black Knight:

Black Knight Mortgage Monitor – March 2015 Report

Low-end homes in the New York-New Jersey CBSA are 30X more likely to be underwater than high-end homes

Posted in Demographics, Economics, Housing Recovery, New Jersey Real Estate | 112 Comments

Next bubble already?

Posted on May 4, 2015 by grim

From HousingWire:

Home price and wage divergence raise alarms

Elsewhere and throughout most markets, home prices and rents keep rising, but sharply declining homeownership means fewer households are benefitting and more and more households are being priced out of homeownership and forced to pay higher rents, a client note from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch says.

Similarly, home prices are up by 25% from the bottom in December 2011, while personal income has only grown by 12.8%, roughly half the level of home price growth. In the past (think housing bubble/crisis), large divergences between home price growth and income growth had disastrous consequences.

Analysts are aware but not panicking.

“At the moment, disaster is not likely looming, but the divergence is at least cause for concern, particularly for the Fed, who has pursued an asset/real estate inflation policy for the past six years. The divergences noted above – between home prices and homeownership and between home price growth and income growth – highlight the transmission challenges faced by the Fed, and why hiking rates may be necessary, if somewhat hard to justify,” says Chris Flanagan at BAML. “The Fed may feel compelled to rein in home price inflation but, at the same time, acknowledge 1Q GDP was a bust for more than just transitory reasons and take note, at least tacitly, that the economic surprise index is hovering at the lowest levels since mid-2012, just before QE3 was rolled out.”

Posted in Demographics, Economics, Employment, Housing Recovery | 60 Comments

Inventory on the horizon? Maybe not.

Posted on May 2, 2015 by grim

From DS News:

Economist: Declining Shadow Inventory Will Not Help Country’s Short Housing Supply

A consistent and steady decline in shadow inventory, which is the number of residential properties that are in foreclosure but not being sold because the owner is waiting for price appreciation, has been a broad trend nationwide, according to National Association of Realtors (NAR) Chief Economist and SVP Lawrence Yun.
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“With new home construction still sluggish the housing inventory shortage could last longer,” Yun said. “Home price increases in many parts of the country are nearly assured as a result. The price gains in some cases will be too fast and not good for the overall health of the local real estate market.”

The percentage of all mortgages comprised of shadow inventory has fallen from 10 percent a few years ago at the height of the crisis down to 4.5 percent, which is essentially back to normal when put in terms of foreclosure starts (46 percent) according to Yun. The thin shadow inventory compared with rising home values has caused the share of distressed home sales to drop to single digits. Since there will be fewer properties sold at deep discounts, this will cause home prices to strengthen, Yun said.

“It also means that those practitioners who specialize in foreclosures or short-sales need to start thinking about a change in business models to normal home buyers and normal positive-equity home sellers,” Yun wrote on the blog.

Since real estate is local, there are outliers to the general nationwide trend of shadow inventory decline. Shadow inventory remains high in some places such as New York and New Jersey, Yun said, and home prices will rise slowly in these areas. But since shadow inventory doesn’t figure to convert into visible inventory in the foreseeable future, what needs to happen to solve the short housing supply problem?

“Investor-owned properties through a flip could show up on the market,” Yun said. “However, most institutional investors who bought a few years ago are indicating a long-term hold to get rent gains which have been nice and profitable. The only true source of more supply is from homebuilders. Unfortunately, they are still not ramping up production to meet the market needs. Consequently, home price gains this year could be too fast for the country, easily rising double or triple the rate of income growth.”

Posted in Economics, Housing Recovery, National Real Estate | 15 Comments

Most expensive dirt in the country

Posted on April 30, 2015 by grim

From the Star Ledger:

Look down, N.J., the land you live on is the most valuable in America, study finds

New Jersey’s land is worth more per acre than any other state, according to a report, and the state’s overall land value ranks among the top in the nation.

The value of an acre of land in New Jersey, excluding buildings or other structures, clocks in at $196,410, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of a new federal study. Only three other states — Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts — have land worth more than $100,000 per acre, according to the report.

The report shows the top five states for land value per acre are:

New Jersey: $196,410
Rhode Island: $133,730
Connecticut: $128,820
Massachusetts: $102,210
Maryland: $75,430

The report was based on findings from a paper released earlier this month by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. The paper notes that New Jersey and Rhode Island are the two most developed states, with roughly 31 percent of land developed in both states.

The paper estimated land values for the contiguous 48 states and the District of Columbia and found the 1.89 billion acres of land that make up that territory are worth about $23 trillion.
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The more than 4.7 million acres of land in New Jersey is worth $930 billion, according to the paper. Just four other states had greater land value overall, the paper shows. Those states are: California, Texas, New York and Florida.

Posted in Economics, New Jersey Real Estate | 133 Comments

Shut up and pay me…

Posted on April 29, 2015 by grim

From the Star Ledger:

7 of the 10 counties in America with the highest property taxes are in N.J., study says

It’s no secret that New Jersey homeowners are hit with some of the highest property taxes in the nation. But just how high, relative to other parts of the country, might be a bit of a shock.

A typical homeowner in Bibb County, Ala., paid just $228 in property taxes in 2013, according to an analysis by Zillow, the real estate website. Compare that to someone paying the median in Paramus or Ridgewood in Bergen, who shelled out $9,546 — about 45 times as much.

Bergen and Bibb lie on opposite ends of a list of median property tax rates nationally. Bergen was third-highest in the country, and the highest in New Jersey, while Bibb joined several other Alabama counties boasting some of the very lowest property tax bills for single-family homes.

Bergen, meanwhile, is one of several New York City-area counties dominating the top 10. Those counties had annual property taxes several times the 2013 national median of $2,132, based on the Zillow analysis, which examined counties in the 50 largest metro areas for which sufficient data was available.

Elsewhere in New Jersey, however, property tax bills, while nowhere near the lowest in the country, were somewhat closer to the national median, according to figures compiled by NJ Advance Media in February (NJ Advance Media looked at average county bills, not the median figure used by Zillow). The average bill in Cumberland in 2013, for instance, was just a little over $3,700 a year, while in nearby Salem, the average was about $4,800.
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Highest:

Westchester, N.Y., $13,842
Rockland, N.Y., $10,550
Bergen, NJ, $9,546
Essex, N.J., $9,288
Nassau, N.Y., $9,091
Passaic, N.J., $8,978
Union, N.J., $8,926
Morris, N.J., $8,549
Hudson, N.J., $8,407
Hunterdon, N.J., $8,392

Posted in New Jersey Real Estate, Politics, Property Taxes | 76 Comments

March Case Shiller

Posted on April 28, 2015 by grim

From the WSJ:

Case-Shiller Home Price Index Climbs Modestly in February

Home prices continued to rise modestly in February, according to a report released on Tuesday, a continued upward push in home values which underscores concerns that buyers’ incomes aren’t keeping pace.

The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, covering the entire nation, rose 4.2% in the 12 months ended in February, weaker than a 4.4% increase in January.

The housing market has been gaining strength in recent months, but some economists fear the improvement is fragile because wages haven’t kept pace with price increases.

“Home prices continue to rise and outpace both inflation and wage gains,” said David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Still, Mr. Blitzer cautioned that only two markets—Denver and Dallas—have surpassed their prerecession housing boom peaks. “If a complete recovery means new highs all around, we’re not there yet,” he said.

Both the 10-city and 20-city indexes saw larger year-over-year increases in February than in January. The 10-city index gained 4.8% from a year earlier, up from 4.3% in January. The 20-city index gained 5% year-over-year, compared with a 4.5% increase in January.

Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected a 4.8% increase in the 20-city index.

Posted in Economics, Housing Recovery, National Real Estate | 115 Comments

What would have been worse – stalling or foreclosing?

Posted on April 27, 2015 by grim

From the Philly Inquirer:

New Jersey still caught in foreclosure nightmare

The foreclosure nightmare that haunted U.S. homeowners during and after the Great Recession has loosened its grip considerably in most states.

In New Jersey, the bad dream just gets scarier.

Foreclosures there are 17 percent higher than they were in 2014, and bank repossessions of homes are up 18 percent, the housing-analytics firm RealtyTrac reported last week – even as the rest of the country logged the lowest foreclosure numbers in eight years.

One in every 234 homes in the state with a mortgage is in some stage of the foreclosure process – the fifth-highest rate in the nation.

New Jersey “should really be compared to where everyone else was two years ago,” said William Hall, manager of housing programs at the nonprofit credit-counseling agency Clarifi, which has an office in Cherry Hill and offered advice to 769 South Jersey homeowners in 2014.

In the first three months of this year, RealtyTrac reports, 14,524 houses were in the foreclosure pipeline in Burlington, Camden, and Gloucester Counties alone. The data show that 4,535 of those properties were vacant – “zombies” abandoned by their owners on lenders’ orders but for which the foreclosure process was never completed.

Philadelphia and its four suburban Pennsylvania counties have four times the number of homes as the three South Jersey counties but had just 12,046 foreclosures in the first quarter, RealtyTrac reports.

In the Sicklerville zip code, 08081, which spans Winslow and Gloucester Townships, RealtyTrac data show 1,088 houses are in foreclosure – more than in any other zip code in those three South Jersey counties.

Foreclosure numbers in greater Atlantic City rose 46 percent in the first quarter over the same period in 2014, meanwhile, giving it the highest foreclosure rate of any U.S. metro area over 200,000 population – one in every 113 houses.
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New Jersey’s foreclosure issues push chances for a complete housing-market turnaround further out of reach, industry observers say.

“In my view, the aftermath of the crisis is still with us,” said Bruce M. Sattin, a lawyer with Szaferman, Lakind, Blumstein & Blader in Lawrenceville who represents clients fighting foreclosure.

“While the number of new foreclosure cases spiked after the real estate market crashed in late 2007, there are still cases from back then in the system,” Sattin said.

How did New Jersey end up in such a mess?
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New Jersey’s continued high foreclosure volume has created problems for neighbors who are up to date with their mortgages but who find out their houses are worth less than they owe, Busler said.

About 50 percent of Clarifi’s clients said they, too, were “underwater,” Hall said, and those borrowers are more likely to default.

Add job losses and lower wages to the mix, Busler said, and “all of this means that recovery in real estate will be very slow.”

Posted in Economics, Foreclosures, Housing Recovery, New Jersey Real Estate | 41 Comments