October 30, 2009

Report: Foreclosures Hurting Prices in Bed-Stuy

Small multi-family buildings in lower-income neighborhoods of Brooklyn have been particularly hard hit by the housing crisis, according to a new report from TerraCrg Commercial Realty Group. As reported in The Real Deal, 80 percent of foreclosure filings in Brooklyn over the past year were for mortgages under $1 million and 51 percent of non-residential mortgages were for three- to four-unit residential buildings; the article also notes that "the majority of the foreclosures took place in lower-priced neighborhoods like Bed-Stuy and East New York." The result? "A bevy of three- to four-unit residential buildings in Bedford-Stuyvesant can be had for under $300,000." No big surprises here, though the headline tries to put a positive spin on the news: "Discounted Brooklyn brownstones coming to market, but not in prime neighborhoods."
Discounted Brooklyn Brownstones Coming to Market [TRD]

August 31, 2009

The 'Judicial Don Quixote' on the Foreclosure Frontlines

gavel%20082009.jpg This morning the Times ran a profile of Brooklyn State Supreme Court Judge Arthur M. Schack, who "fashions himself a judicial Don Quixote, tilting at the phalanxes of bankers, foreclosure facilitators, and lawyers who file motions by the bale." Schack is known for tossing out foreclosure motions on technicalities: "Justice Schack, like a handful of state and federal judges, has taken a magnifying glass to the mortgage industry. In the gilded haste of the past decade, bankers handed out millions of mortgages—with terms good, bad and exotically ugly—then repackaged those loans for sale to investors from Connecticut to Singapore. Sloppiness reigned. So many papers have been lost, signatures misplaced and documents dated inaccurately that it is often not clear which bank owns the mortgage. Justice Schack’s take is straightforward, and sends a tremor through some bank suites: If a bank cannot prove ownership, it cannot foreclose." Schack, who is Brooklyn born and bred, began crossing swords with banks over foreclosures in 2007, when they started to spike here. "Banks had given out loans structured to fail," he says.
A ‘Little Judge’ Who Rejects Foreclosures, Brooklyn Style [NY Times]
Photo by steakpinball.

August 26, 2009

Foreclosure of the Week: 130 Lincoln Road

This one-family house at 130 Lincoln Road in Prospect Lefferts Gardens has been scheduled for foreclosure auction a couple times already this year and has managed to dodge a bullet both times so don't get your hopes up but...it's scheduled again for tomorrow at 3 pm and with a lien of just $245,263 and intriguing architectural features this could be worth showing up for.
130 Lincoln Road [Property Shark] GMAP

August 6, 2009

Brooklyn Monthly Foreclosures

There were 47 new foreclosures in July for Brooklyn, which has 873,000 households total, according to PropertyShark's monthly foreclosure report. This is a 27 percent increase from the 37 foreclosures in June, but a 25 percent decrease from the 63 foreclosures in the same month last year. Regardless of that year-over-year number, it's hard not to look at that upward-trending line and not be just a little bit scared. The report includes data from all five boroughs: notably, Queens is the foreclosure leader, with 199 new foreclosures in July, or 63 percent of all foreclosures in New York City, while Manhattan saw only four new foreclosures. Overall, citywide, foreclosures are down 7.6 percent from June, and down 6.7 percent from July 2008.
Data from PropertyShark

August 5, 2009

Foreclosure of the Week: 821 Greene Avenue

Something tells us the bank ain't going to be made whole on this loan. This four-unit house at 821 Greene Avenue in Bed Stuy sold for $775,000 in 2006 (after selling for $600,000 in 2005) and somehow has managed to accumulate a lien of $805,937. Downright bubble-icious! The four-story house has an interesting exterior but we're betting from the looks of those windows and the condition of the brownstone that the interior is not exactly move-in ready. What do you think this goes for at auction tomorrow? The auction takes place tomorrow at 3 p.m. at 360 Adams Street, Room 274.
821 Greene Avenue Foreclosure [Property Shark] GMAP

July 23, 2009

Foreclosure of the Week: 549 Henry Street

Here's one of the more interesting foreclosure sales we've seen in a long time: The four-story brownstone at 549 Henry Street in Carroll Gardens is scheduled to hit the auction block today. In addition to being a nice looking building, the lien amount of $846,966 also strikes us as being less than the market value of the property. Of course, when that's the case, the property in question has a way of not making to auction so we'll see how this one goes. What do you think it's worth?
549 Henry Street Foreclosure [Property Shark] GMAP

July 8, 2009

Foreclosure of the Week: 189 Lefferts Place

This place has been bouncing on and off the foreclosure list for much of the past two years (in fact, we highlighted it back in February), so don't get your hopes up that it'll actually come up for sale as scheduled tomorrow but if you were able to pick up the five-story house at some kind of discount to its $578,034 lien, it could be a good buy. We wouldn't get in a bidding war over it though!
189 Lefferts Place [Property Shark] GMAP

July 6, 2009

Brooklyn Foreclosures Back Up Again in the 2nd Quarter

For a while now, the Brooklyn foreclosure statistics have seemed suspiciously low based on the anecdotal evidence we were hearing about activity in some of the lower-income parts of the borough; the first quarter of 2009, at a total of 39 foreclosures, in particular, seemed too low to be true. Well, now the official stats, like the ones just released from PropertyShark.com are starting to catch up. In the second quarter, the number of foreclosures in Brooklyn increased 92 percent to 71. While large in percentage terms, the total number was still the lowest among the outer boroughs (Queens is still far and away the worst off, with 610 foreclosures in Q2) and 12 less than in the fourth quarter of 2008. Overall, these absolute numbers still feel low, but maybe it just takes such a long time for the problems to make it to the point where they are officially recorded as being in foreclosure.

June 26, 2009

Rising Inventory Bad News for Burg

With over 5,000 new apartments (condos and rentals) expected to hit the Williamsburg market this year and next (combined), it doesn't take an Economics PhD to predict what the impact on pricing is likely to be or what it could mean for the number of foreclosures in the area. There are over 1,800 new condos coming online this year and another 1,200 or so scheduled for 2010, according to The Real Deal. A bigger problem than pricing or over-supply, though, is lack of financing. Very few lenders (if any) are willing to finance condo purchases in buildings that don't already have the large majority of their units in contract. "The pace of activity [in Williamsburg] is well off from last year," said Miller Samuels' Jonathan Miller, "not because of lack of demand, but because buyers are having a very difficult time getting financing for projects that aren't 70 to 75 percent sold already." Unless that changes, developers have few options other than to go rental (which their financing partners don't always want to do) or lose their properties. In fact, banks have already begun foreclosure proceedings at the Factory Lofts at 66 North 1st Street, Warehouse 11 at 214 North 11th Street and the Metropolitan at 349 Metropolitan (above). "It used to be enjoyable, exciting to open a new building," said David Maundrell, president of Aptsandlofts.com, who provided the inventory predictions aboe. "Now it's nerve-wracking." Indeed.
More Foreclosures Likely as W'burg Inventory Grows [TRD]

June 11, 2009

Foreclosure of the Week: 115 Fenimore Street

This free-standing wood house at 115 Fenimore Street in Prospect Lefferts Gardens is scheduled for auction this week, though given that the lien against it is only $26,051 we'll be surprised if it actually makes it to the auction block. The auction takes place on Thursday at 3 p.m. in Room 274 at 360 Adams Street.
115 Fenimore Street [Property Shark] GMAP

June 3, 2009

Foreclosures in Brooklyn Up Slightly But Still Low

The number of foreclosures in Brooklyn ticked up slightly in May, according to PropertyShark.com, a trend exhibited in Queens but not the other three boroughs. The 21 foreclosures in Brooklyn last month was the highest number since November though well below the monthly average for 2008. Meanwhile Queens continued to dominate the city's foreclosure scene with a total of 201; May also marked the first time that the top 15 zip codes for foreclosures were all in Queens. Brooklyn's per household foreclosure rate remains a low 0.002% as compared to 0.001% for Manhattan, 0.004% for the Bronx and 0.017% for Queens.

May 20, 2009

Foreclosure of the Week: 1316 Beverley Road

This house at 1316 Beverley Road in Victorian Flatbush almost came up for auction back in 2007 and is slated for sale tomorrow. From what we gather, someone started to renovate it ~~back in 2006~~ earlier this decade but ran out of steam mid-way through the project. This patch of Beverley is a little spotty but it's surrounded both to the south and north on Argyle and Rugby by beautiful homes so this could be an interesting play if you can get it anywhere near the lien amount of $409,036. Anymore know anything more about its circumstances or the condition of the interior? GMAP

May 18, 2009

Minorities Disproportionately Hit by Foreclosure Crisis

As the foreclosure crisis sweeps the area, blacks and Latinos have been particularly hard hit, according to an article in the NY Times. In fact, in 85 percent of the hardest-hit neighborhoods, the majority of homeowners are black or Latino. The most jarring statistic in the article was that middle class black households were five times as likely to have a subprime mortgage than whites earning similar annual incomes of $68,000 and higher. When The Times visited a stretch of Bainbridge Street in Bed Stuy (photo), it found anecdotally that a number of middle-class black professionals were paying interest rates of nine to 11 percent on their mortgages. One explanation given is a historic mistreatment by, and ensuing mistrust of, mainstream banks by the black community; another, of course, is the targeting of black customers by the most predatorial providers of sub-prime financing. “I don’t want to say it’s in the cultural DNA, but a lot of us who are older than 30 have some memory of disappointment or humiliation related to banks,” said Colvin Grannum, president of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. “The white guy in the suit with the same income gets a loan and you don’t? So you turn to local brokers, even if they don’t offer the best rates.” Another counter-intuitive fact: Middle-class blacks were more likely than lower-income blacks to have subprime mortgages. The hypothesized reason? The lower-income earners had access to, and took advantage of, community resources (free classes, etc.) to educate themselves. Still, the efforts to make the dream of home ownership more readily available to minorities that began under President Clinton in the 1990s has certainly had some dire unintended consequences. “Rather than helping to narrow the wealth and home ownership gap between black and white,” Mr. Grannum said, “we’ve managed in the last few years to strip a lot of equity out of black neighborhoods.”
Minorities Affected Most as New York Foreclosures Rise [NY Times]
Photo by kenf225

April 23, 2009

Foreclosures of the Week

For the first time in recent memory, there are a couple of nice-looking houses in high-rent parts of town up for foreclosure this week. Is it a sign of things to come? First up is 224 Bergen Street, a four-story brick house in Boerum Hill that's been in the same hands since at least 1999; the lien amount is unavailable. The second pick is 17 Old Fulton Street, a three-family brick building right next to Grimaldi's; the bounty on its head is a modest (for the area) $471,584. The auctions are being held at 3 p.m. tomorrow at 360 Adams Street, Rooms 274 and 261 respectively.
Foreclosure: 224 Bergen Street [Property Shark] GMAP
Foreclosure: 17 Old Fulton Street [Property Shark] GMAP

Lessons From the Foreclosure Front Lines

A recently transplanted New Yorker named Michael Houtkin won the bidding on a one-bedroom condominium on the outskirts of Boca Raton, a few blocks from three golf courses, for the incredible price of $30,000. “Things were almost being given away,” he said later...The glut of foreclosed homes creates a self-reinforcing cycle. Falling prices lead to more foreclosures. Foreclosures lead to an excess supply of homes for sale. The excess supply then leads to further price declines. Jan Hatzius, the chief economist at Goldman Sachs, says that the “massive amount of excess supply” means that home prices nationwide will probably fall an additional 15 percent. — David Leonhardt in The New York Times

April 10, 2009

Foreclosures Are Their Palaces

Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said about a dozen advocacy groups around the country were actively moving homeless people into vacant homes — some working in secret, others, like Take Back the Land, operating openly. In addition to squatting, some advocacy groups have organized civil disobedience actions in which borrowers or renters refuse to leave homes after foreclosure. The groups say that they have sometimes received support from neighbors and that beleaguered police departments have not aggressively gone after squatters. — The New York Times

April 9, 2009

Foreclosure Looming at 55 Eckford Street?

Earlier in the week, we noticed on Property Shark that 55 Eckford Street was scheduled to come up for foreclosure. This caught our eye because we haven't seen a lot of partially-finished developments reach that stage yet. We asked Miss Heather of New York Shitty to grab a photo and by the time she nicely obliged, the foreclosure listing had been removed. Still, it can't be far off: The Scarano-designed 12-story project's been stalled at six stories since at least late 2006, when this blog post was written. A Stop Work Order has been in effect since early 2007. GMAP

April 3, 2009

Brooklyn Foreclosures Drop Dramatically in First Quarter

While foreclosures city-wide were down slightly in the first quarter versus a year ago, they were down significantly in Brooklyn. According to PropertyShark, there were only 37 foreclosures in Brooklyn over the last three months, versus 140 in the first quarter of 2008 and 83 in the fourth quarter of 2008; Manhattan also saw a marked decline. You can check out a dynamic map of the Brooklyn properties here. If the same thing were happening in the Bronx and Queens, we might chalk it up to the government and bank programs, but that doesn't appear to be the case. So any ideas what could explain this trend in Brooklyn?

March 25, 2009

Foreclosure of the Week: 29 Lefferts Place

29 Lefferts Place, which has been cinder-blocked up for at least the last couple of years, is scheduled to come up for foreclosure auction on Saturday. At issue is a lien in the paltry amount of $18,535. Any takers? The auction will take place at 3 p.m. in Room 274 at 360 Adams Street. The plaintiff's attorney's number is (585) 238-2000.
29 Lefferts Place [Property Shark] GMAP

March 16, 2009

To Bail or Not To Bail on Your Home?

If the value of your home is less than the amount of your mortgage does it make sense to keep making your payments or should you just walk away? If you can't get the bank to reduce the principal of your loan, what should you do? Well, no one can tell you that because every situation is different, but, as The Times points out this weekend, the penalties for defaulting on your mortgage may not be as onerous as they once were. First of all, more and more banks and saying OK to short sales, in which the owner sells the house for less than the value of the mortgage; secondly, even if you go into foreclosure, the bank is unlikely to chase you down to make up the difference between the sales price and the mortgage amount. If the lender does forgive some piece of your debt, however, some states will still try to treat the forgiven debt as taxable income. Lastly, some legal experts expect that the credit rating agencies won't hit you as hard for a foreclosure now as they might have in the past. “It just seems obvious that a foreclosure in 2008 or 2009 doesn’t have as much information value as a foreclosure five years ago,” said legal prof Todd J. Zywicki. Are any readers currently underwater and considering voluntarily bailing on their home?
Thoughts on Walking Away From Your Home Loan [NY Times]
Photo by Jennscrzy

March 12, 2009

U.S. Foreclosure Filings Rise 30 Percent

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Foreclosure filings in the U.S. climbed 30 percent in February from a year earlier as the worsening economy thwarted efforts by the government and lenders to prevent homeowners from losing property, RealtyTrac Inc. said. A total of 290,631 homes received a default or auction notice or were seized by the lender, the Irvine, California-based seller of default data said in a statement today. It was the third-highest monthly total in RealtyTrac records dating to 2005. February filings increased 6 percent from January.

March 10, 2009

Brooklyn Foreclosures Low and Steady in February

For the gazillionth month in a row, the only borough in New York City to exhibit foreclosure problems was Queens, which had 183 foreclosures in February compared to 170 in January. Meanwhile, according to statistics from PropertyShark, Brooklyn held firm at 12 for the month, not much more than in Manhattan, where totals inched up from 5 to 9 last month. Presumably most of the problems we all read about on a daily basis are just working their way through the system or getting restructured, extended, etc. Even with that backdrop these numbers seem crazily low, no?
February Foreclosures Report [Curbed]

February 25, 2009

Foreclosure of the Week: 167 Prospect Place

Like so many foreclosures, this one at 167 Prospect Place looks a little funky. The Prospect Heights brownstone was purchased in 2006 for $1,650,000, and financed with first and second mortgages totaling $1,200,000. The house was then sold for a whopping $50,000 in 2007. It's been bouncing around the foreclosure system since last summer with a lien of $1,114,555. It's on the schedule for tomorrow again. 3 p.m. at 360 Adams, Room 274. GMAP

February 18, 2009

A Couple of Foreclosures

Here are a couple of foreclosures this week that may interest some readers. First up: Unit 2R at 559 Warren Street. One of eight co-op apartments in the 6,500-square-foot building between 3rd and 4th Avenues, this property has a lien of $122,984 against it. Second pick: 189 Lefferts Place. The 16-foot wide three-family brownstone between Classon and Franklin has a lien of $578,034 against it, which can be a whole lot less than it's worth. The auctions take place at 3 p.m. on Thurday at 360 Adams Street; 559 Warren happens on the front steps and 189 Lefferts in Room 274.
559 Warren Street Foreclosure [PropertyShark] GMAP
189 Lefferts Place Foreclosure [PropertyShark] GMAP

February 6, 2009

Brooklyn Foreclosures Holding at Low Levels

Like the city as a whole, the number of Brooklyn foreclosures was down in January versus most months last year according to data from PropertyShark. Other than December, which was unusually low because of the holiday moratorium, the monthly foreclosure figure for Brooklyn last year ranged from 21 to 63; by comparison, the number was 12 in January 2009. Manhattan continued to have the fewest foreclosures and Queens maintained its title as the foreclosure capital of New York City on an absolute basis, though it was higher in Staten Island on a per capita basis. As the chart on the jump shows, New York City as a whole had a far lower rate of foreclosure than Los Angeles, Miami and Seattle.

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