Warren County Ohio Foreclosure Update: Scheduled Sheriff's Sales through 3/19/2012
Buckle up ladies and gentlemen. This one is long and involved, but by the end you'll have our full interpretation of the current Warren County Ohio real estate market and how foreclosures and shorts sales are impacting local residential home sales.
The latest numbers show a continued INCREASE in foreclosures for Warren County with a plausible explanation for the increase. We added three additional weeks of foreclosures, but they represent a five week span. Just like the last report, weeks were skipped, two this time. If you were to distribute the typical 30 per week foreclosures over three weeks, the numbers are still what would be expected for the time period, so despite an appearance of an increase in foreclosures, we may still be stable for quantities of foreclosed homes when averaged to a weekly basis. We'll continue to monitor and report on foreclosures.
NOTE: The chart details the number of scheduled sheriff's sales PLANNED by week for Warren County Ohio and represents a wide range of locations and price ranges throughout the county. The numbers include builders and property rental owners being foreclosed, not just private individuals occupying the homes. The data source is the Warren County Sheriff's website. The chart is primarily intended to provide you a trend on Warren County foreclosures. Horizontal lines occur at intervals of 10.
Click Warren County's Sheriff's Foreclosures for additional details to access the official list from the Warren County Sheriff's website.
On January 7th, Cincinnati MLS currently lists 1308 (DOWN from 1429 for the December report) homes for sale and not under contract in Warren County. An obvious decrease in homes offered as sellers take a holiday respite from attempting to sell.
Of those 1308, 68 (DOWN 7 from 75) are government or bank owned (now 5.20% of Warren County homes for sale vs. December's 5.25%, so stable as a portion of available sales). Keep in mind bank owned homes will NOT take a holiday break. They stay on the market until sold.
There are also an increasing number of short sale opportunities, 96 (UP 31 from 65) are MARKED Seller's Lender Approval required, although there are additional homes listed as short sale candidates in the marketing remarks. This is a SIGNIFICANT INCREASE in short sale opportunities. There are many factors that could be influencing this increase: more sellers are unable to wait for market conditions to turn in their favor, banks being more willing to work with short sales, a reduction in the social stigma for sellers to short sale, more agents trained in short sales.....any and all of these factors could be in play.
The distressed home categories range in price from $25,000 all the way to $597,500 dollars. Overall, 12.54% of Warren County's homes for sale are clearly classified as distressed property. Up from last months 9.80%, the impact is primarily due to the increase in short sale attempts.
In regards to sales for December, 34 (was 30) bank/government owned and 3 (was 1) short sale homes closed out of 171 total homes recorded as closed. Of the 171, that would mean 21.64% of December sales in Warren County were distressed properties (UP 4% from the last report's 17.82%). Obviously, buyers are still looking for the bargains on the market. Sales prices ranged from $14,000 to $424,000. For most neighborhoods, distressed properties aren't dictating the values, but they are exerting some influence.
However, examining the numbers, there continues to be an unknown number of homes being held
in reserve by the banks/government and not yet placed back on the market. These homes are commonly referred to as "shadow inventory". Monthly foreclosures are continuing to exceed homes offered for sale and the completed sales, so at some point we'd expect more homes to be returned to the market.
For Warren County buyers, there are still a limited number of opportunities, and some distressed properties will be in less than desirable condition. Our experience is that often these "bargains" are offset by the work needed to return them to a fully livable condition. Of recent lender owned homes we have shown buyers, only ONE was truly move-ready thanks to updates made as part of the Freddie Mac Homesteps program.
For Warren County home sellers, the distressed home volume is NOT significant enough IN MOST NEIGHBORHOODS to prevent buyers from coming to your home if properly priced and marketed . However, place a few distressed property sales together and they do drive the expected price from buyers.
Real estate is LOCAL, please disregard the National news and to a certain extent even the Cincinnati and Dayton reports as they are driven by urban real estate and NOT suburban and rural properties.
DISCLAIMER: There may be additional homes offered for sale in ONLY the Dayton MLS that might include additional foreclosed homes and short sale candidates. When working with buyers for Warren County, we use BOTH Cincinnati and Dayton MLS to ensure our buyers have visibility to ALL MLS listed homes.
If you have questions regarding these sales, or other real estate related questions,
please don't hesitate to contact us!
Serving Your Warren County Residential Real Estate Needs,
Bill & Liz aka BLiz
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