Posted on 03/28/2013 6:28:00 PM PDT by Nachum
ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - A national survey found 301,874 "zombie" properties dotting the U.S. landscape in which homeowners in foreclosure have moved out, leaving vacant property susceptible to vandalism and degradation.
Florida tops the list of zombie properties with 90,556 vacant homes in foreclosure, according to a foreclosure inventory released on Thursday by RealtyTrac, a real estate information company in Irvine, California.
Illinois and California ranked a distant second and third with 31,668 and 28,821 zombie properties respectively on the list.
The number of homes overall in foreclosure or bank-owned rose by 9 percent to 1.5 million properties nationally in the first quarter of 2013 compared to a year ago, according to RealtyTrac.
Another 10.9 million homeowners nationwide remain at risk because they owe more than their property is worth, according to company vice president Daren Blomquist.
RealtyTrac for the first time analyzed data on zombie properties after a Reuters' special report in January examined the special problem of zombie titles, Blomquist said.
(Excerpt) Read more at homes.yahoo.com ...
obamacomics—its a a laugh a day
Sounds like Woodbury to me =)
While the corrupt continue to keep property taxes high, and no one is investigating to find out how. Fake sales, perhaps? People pretending to be buyers and owners, when they’re only caretakers, maybe?
Bring back US jobs.
Then people might start buying houses again.
People are living in the houses in Woodbury.
There’s about 10 of them in my neighborhood.
Well, whatever you call it, it’s an unnatural state for the economy to be in. Surplus inventory does nobody any good sitting on the shelf, especially if you have to pay tax on that inventory every year. If the banks hadn’t been artificially propped up by the government, they would have no option but to cut their losses, and steeply discount the homes in order to sell them.
Sure, that would impact other home prices, but if the home market still needs to correct, then it will happen one way or another, and trying to stall it seems to only make the correction worse.
Bookmark
Well, the property taxes are probably kept high by machinations of the governments, not the banks. Usually, the assessment formula is not based on a simple average home price. They do it on multi-year averages, and build enough wiggle-room into the formula to let them jerrymander the assessments any way they want.
In my experience, they have a target amount of revenue they project to get from the taxes, and they end up billing the taxpayers for that amount, regardless of how the home prices change. The only people who usually get their taxes lowered are the ones who fight the assessments in court. If you are willing to do that, they will always magically find that your home was over-assessed, and you’ll get a refund.
Now, only a minority of the taxpayers want to bother to go to court, so they can afford to take those losses and pass them on to everyone else. Of course, the real estate tax attorneys are in on the scam also, and they probably have the easiest specialty in the legal business, since they win everytime, and get a guaranteed cut of every refund!
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