9,000 Foreclosures a day! That is how many homes were lost by families in the U.S. in October!  A staggering number, and when you think about it, very sad for the families and individuals getting kicked out of their homes.  Those 280,000 foreclosures in October were an increase of 25 percent from a year earlier.
     Arizona, our home state, ranked number two in the nation that month with 17,507 homes foreclosed.  These foreclosed homes were mostly returned to the banks that held the mortgages, those banks then farm them out to Asset Management Companies to get them sold through local real estate companies.  This effects our market pricing since the number of foreclosed homes reflects future pricing of all the area homes.  Those foreclosed homes are marketed for sale at a reduced rate to get them sold quickly.  With a number of lower priced homes selling in a particular subdivision,  that lowers the pricing of all homes in the subdivision.  This logic would mean that the current pricing of homes in our area will continue to decline until we can get the foreclosure numbers down substantially.  The good news is that Fannie and Freddie have both put a holiday freeze on foreclosures and a number of banks are attempting to modify current mortgages before they end up in foreclosure (Chase for instance says it has helped about 250,000 families avoid foreclosure since July 2007)..  The real issue here is that currently the financial institutions cannot modify loans fast enough to keep up with foreclosures. FDIC stated that only 4 percent of the seriously delinquent mortgages are being modified each month.  This is not good news to those of us in the Phoenix market looking for a turn around in pricing anytime soon.