Dennis Norman
A report released by CoreLogic showed the St. Louis metro area to have a foreclosure rate in April of 1.49 percent up slightly from March’s revised rate of 1.45 percent and an increase of 34.2 percent from the year prior when the rate was 1.11 percent.
The national foreclosure rate for April remains over twice the rate of St. Louis at 3.20 percent and was an increase of 30.1 percent from a year ago when the national foreclosure rate was 2.46 percent. For the State of Missouri the April foreclosure rate was 1.33 percent, a 30.4 percent increase from a year ago when Missouri’s rate was 1.02 percent.
Looks like more foreclosures to come…
Unfortunately, as I have been saying for a while now, I don’t think we are going to see much, if any, improvement in the foreclosure rate anytime soon. The rate of serious mortgage delinquencies continues to increase. For April 2010, 6.17 percent of the home loans in St. Louis were 90 days or more delinquent on their mortgage payments, an increase of 51.2 percent from a year ago when the delinquency rate in St. Louis was 4.1 percent.
Nationally, the rate of serious delinquency on home mortgages in April 2010 hit 8.90 percent, an increase of 47.6 percent from a year ago when the national rate was 6.03 percent.
Foreclosures will put downward pressure on the Market…
Over the past couple of months the housing market has had some reason to celebrate as home sales increased at fairly significant rates. Unfortunately this little bit of Utopia is probably going to be short-lived as it was nothing more than a “false-market” created by the home-buyer tax credits. Now that the April 30th deadline for the tax credits has passed we are going to no doubt see the sales numbers drop as the underlying problems are still there…unemployment and uncertainty about our country’s financial future, to name a couple. Even during these recent “good times” we have seen pricing pressures resulting in home prices continuing to decline in many markets. So, couple the drop in sales we no doubt have coming, along with the still-increasing foreclosure and mortgage delinquency rate, and, in my opinion, we have a recipe to continue to beat on home prices for some time to come.
To end on a positive note though…If you are one of the fortunate people out there that are comfortable in your financial position and are looking to make a move, you have an abundance of homes available out there, with record-low interest rates and prices that we haven’t seen, in many cases, in years!
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