What in the heck is going on with foreclosures and are they really up dramatically?

In the last few weeks, I've seen a number of different times where media outlets put out articles where they were talking about how foreclosures were up. In fact, I saw they mentioned that foreclosures were up 34%, which would be, if true, a lot of extra foreclosures coming to market.

And so I did a little digging. I did a little looking, and so here's the truth. Foreclosures are up and maybe even the 34%. That's a nationwide number by the way, but that's compared to a time when the foreclosure moratorium was in place. As you will see on the graph, we're actually at all time lows of foreclosures.

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The 34% is simply compared to a time when there weren't any foreclosures.. So of course they were going to be higher, but the truth of the matter is we are at the lowest of lows in terms of the amount of foreclosures we're seeing in the real estate marketplace. There's several reasons for that. Number one, people's monthly payments on the whole are really low because a lot of people are locked into really low mortgage rates.

There are also very few foreclosures because people have so much equity. Our home prices have grown so much in the last few years that the amount of equity that the average homeowner has in their home would make it absolutely irresponsible on their part to let their home go to foreclosure when they could simply sell it, reap the equity they've got in it and move on to their next stage of life, whatever that might be for them. But you wouldn't let it go just back to the bank. You wouldn't let the bank have it. The bank would love to have it, by the way, because they would garner all that equity instead of the homeowner taking care of it themselves.

So the graph definitely does show we are at an all time low, and the truth about it is, they are up a lot percentage wise, but up a lot over nothing is still not much. That's really the truth of it. There are people out there waiting on a foreclosure wave before they buy a home. Here's the deal with that. I think they're going to be waiting a long, long wait for the most part. Are there going to be little pockets and little periods of time when there's a trickle of some foreclosures coming to market? For sure there is, but there's no big wave of them coming.

There's simply no reason to wait to buy a home, hoping for foreclosures to come to market because in large part, they're just not showing up there. They're not going to for any reasonable period of time.

If you happen to know someone that's in financial distress and they need to sell their home to avoid foreclosure, please reach out to me and let me know. I have a lot of experience in the past years of the financial crisis back in 2008, nine and 10, and helping people in those situations.

Of course if you're thinking about buying, selling, or investing in real estate, please reach out to us. We'd love to help you. Call or text at 513-586-6900

Questions about selling your house?

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