Foreclosed home sales fall locally

Posted on by Listify Me

Updated 7:23 PM Sunday, March 4, 2012

By Chelsey Levingston

Staff Writer

Fewer homes sold in 2011 involved foreclosures in Butler County, according to a new report released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc.

Last year in Butler County, 867 home properties in some stage of foreclosure were sold, accounting for more than 16 percent of all home sales, according to RealtyTrac. That was an approximately 24 percent drop in foreclosure-related sales from 2010.

However, in Hamilton County, 1,889 homes in the foreclosure process were sold, near 15 percent of all sales and a more than 460 percent increase from 2010.

Foreclosure-related sales include short sales, a sale to a third party at sheriff’s auction or bank-owned sales. It does not include sales back to lenders. Sales of distressed properties in the U.S. in 2005 were about 1 percent of all sales, according to RealtyTrac.

“It brings the average prices of homes down,” said Daryl Dunn, vice president of residential sales for Henkle Schueler Real Estate. “And that’s what’s affecting the market right now because there’s so many foreclosures out there in one shape or another.”

Henkle Schueler is based in Lebanon, but it does business in Butler, Warren, Hamilton and Montgomery counties.

The average home sales price in 2011 for Butler County was $134,448, down about 5.5 percent from 2010, according to the Multiple Listing Service of Greater Cincinnati.

Real estate and bank experts said they expect to see one more bump in foreclosures from the $25 billion, multi-state foreclosure fraud settlement reached with the nation’s largest mortgage servicers before the end of the foreclosure crisis comes in sight.

RealtyTrac expects U.S. foreclose sales to increase in 2012, but expect more of those foreclosures to be sold by short sale before the properties are repossessed by banks, said spokesman Daren Blomquist. Mortgage servicers have a higher chance of return with pre-foreclosures than bank-owned sales. A bank-owned property has costs to maintain and banks now have incentives to work with homeowners, he said.

“As the lenders push through some of the delayed foreclosures, then these foreclosures will in turn eventually be listed and sold in the market as foreclosure sales,” Blomquist said. “We’ll see more markets where there are more short sales than bank-owned sales in 2012.”

This foreclosure sales report is a quarterly report by RealtyTrac to show how much foreclosures account for residential property sales. The California firm also keeps track every month of foreclosure filings made against properties.]

Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2551 or clevingston@coxohio.com.