The Growing Rate of Foreclosures in the Tampa Bay Area
The article below details the Tampa Bay area statistics for homeowner foreclosures for the first six months of 2007. The rate of increase over the same period the prior year is 90 percent.
For every 79 households in the Tampa Bay area, there was one foreclosure filing during the first six months of this year, according to a new report released Tuesday.
With 10,173 homes falling into foreclosure in the period, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area ranked 24th among the 100 largest U.S. metro areas tracked by Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac, an industry research company.
The number of homes in the Tampa Bay metro area in foreclosure during the first six months of the years is 90 percent higher than in the same period last year, RealtyTrac said.
Five other Florida cities were listed in the report. Of those, the Miami area ranked highest at seventh, while the Sarasota area ranked 31st.
A growing number of homeowners in Florida are in ‘distress and don’t have many options to avoid foreclosure,’ said Daren Blomquist, a spokesman for RealtyTrac. ‘As lenders sell homes below market value, prices in whole neighborhoods could be pushed down.’
The foreclosure rate in Florida from January through June was one foreclosure filing for every 81 households. That’s up 84 percent from the same period last year, according to RealtyTrac. The national average for the same time period is one filing for every 134 households.
Other states fared worse than Florida. California had 12 cities ranked out of the 100 cities surveyed, including four in the top 10. Stockton, Calif., ranked No. 1 with one foreclosure filing for every 27 households.
Richmond, Va., ranked last with one foreclosure filing for every 2,319 households.
RealtyTrac’s report comes just a week after another California research company, Foreclosures.com, said Florida had the second-highest rate of preforeclosure filings in the first half of the year. Preforeclosures are reported after a homeowner defaults on mortgage payments.
That report found that Florida had 17.6 preforeclosures for every 1,000 households during the first six months of 2007. Mike Alea, owner of Brandon-based Elite Mortgage Network, a residential lender, said the Tampa Bay area must feel this kind of pain before the market can rebound.
‘The market is just correcting itself right now,’ Alea said. ‘Housing prices went up too much too quickly.’
‘If you have cash, it’s a perfect time to buy,’ he said.
Tags: Stop Foreclosure
