When the nation’s home prices were booming, Florida led the way. Now, with the housing market in a slump, the state is taking the lead in tackling one of the boom’s more onerous legacies: sky-high property taxes.
Florida’s legislature is considering various plans that aim not only to cut taxes, but also to change a system that many regard as unfair. Much like California, Florida protects existing homeowners, effectively capping the amount that their property taxes can rise from year to year.
As house prices have more than doubled in Florida over the past five years, the system has shifted the tax burden onto people who don’t enjoy the same protection: new homeowners, business owners, real-estate investors, people with second homes and “snowbirds,” nonresidents who have vacation homes in the state.
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Most people have smoke alarms, many have carbon-monoxide detectors, and a good number even have devices that detect flooding or unexpected changes in temperature. But all of these alarms are useful only if someone is there to hear them.
“The untold story of professionally monitored security systems is that people are using them for a variety of reasons beyond burglar protection,” said Ann Lindstrom, a spokeswoman for ADT Security Services in Boca Raton, Fla. “We are the eyes and ears for people when they can’t be home.”
Better systems are monitored around the clock by companies like ADT. When a customer’s alarm system is triggered, Ms. Lindstrom said, the company will first call the house — or any other numbers provided by the homeowner — to make sure the alarm wasn’t set off by accident. If there is no answer, or if the owner answers but is away from home, the company will call the police or fire department.
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The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) quarterly delinquency report is jammed full of information reported from dozens of different perspectives - all loans, prime, subprime, government guaranteed and not, national, regional, and by state, and by several different categories of delinquency. The information is important (witness the stock market reaction on Tuesday) and interesting but can be tough to read and understand.
Looked at in a historical overall delinquency should not be particularly alarming. In the last five years the rate for all loans has moved in a narrow range from a low of 4.31 percent during the first quarter of 2005 to a high of 5.27 percent in mid-2002. While prime delinquencies are in the upper range, there has been 5 quarters since the beginning of 2002 when the rate has been higher. However, sub-prime delinquencies were at the highest level since the third quarter of 2002, and FHA loans reached a new record.
But there has been a recent escalation that alarms observers, especially given the number of ARMs that will experience rate adjustments over the next few years. All adjustable rate (ARM) as well as fixed rate (FRM) loans had higher seasonally adjusted delinquency rates compared to the third quarter of 2006.
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Many borrowers with adjustable-rate mortgages are simply not prepared when the rates on those loans shoot up. Low-income borrowers and those with weak credit have felt the sting of the market slowdown the most, and now tighter lending standards brought about by increased defaults are ruling out refinancing for many who may have qualified for a better loan a year ago.
This is happening in states like Florida and Nevada, where speculation ran rampant during the years of double-digit home-price appreciation. “It isn’t adjusting $75 or $100—payments are doubling,” says Johnson of Nevada’s CCCS.
When price growth abated and rates rose, many buyers that stretched to purchase a home with the intention of flipping it have been forced to foreclose. Other states, like Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio, have seen a spike in foreclosures over the last year because of crumbling industry and rising unemployment rates.
A record number of people could face the emotional trauma of losing a home in 2007, but some good may come of it. Long term, tighter lending standards will weed out possible foreclosure candidates.
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Recent data concerning mortgage delinquencies and home foreclosures has created a chicken-and-egg question about the current housing scare. Has a soft real estate market weakened the economy, or did economic weakness hurt the real estate market? Both cause-and-effect relationships might exist at the same time, in what economists call a vicious cycle. But the prognosis for investors and economic policymakers is different, depending on how you look at the problem. The latest evidence suggests that, once again, it’s the economy, stupid.
New-home sales in February deteriorated unexpectedly, with the worst declines in the Northeast and Midwest. Existing-home sales sank in the Midwest to 124,000 in February from 155,000 in January, the slowest pace since February 1997.
The bitter February cold snap helps explain home sales in the Midwest and Northeast. But other data suggest that a chill in the heartland manufacturing economy is playing a role.
James Hamilton, an economics professor at the University of California at San Diego, observes that many of the states with the worst mortgage delinquency rates are in the Midwest and South.
Data from the Mortgage Bankers Association, reflecting the fourth quarter of 2006, include among the top 20 states in mortgage delinquencies Mississippi, Georgia, Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee, Missouri and Illinois.
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The number of homes in or nearing foreclosure is growing, and some investors are taking advantage of the bargains created. But even with a steady stream of distressed properties coming on the market, jumping into foreclosure investing is dangerous, especially if you are not familiar with the process or new to real-estate investing.
The transaction has to make sense financially, figuring in the costs of getting the property back into marketable condition, the value it’s going to have at resale and the length of time it’s going to take to find a buyer — if you do, in fact, plan on reselling immediately instead of holding it to rent out or live in. It’s also important to know if there are liens on the property. Adding to the complexity of the investment are the various state and county foreclosure laws and regulations throughout the country. “This is hard work,” said Daryl White, a foreclosure investor in Valencia, Calif. “Forget about ‘If I can do it, you can do it’” lines from late-night television infomercials, he added. White, a subscriber of Foreclosures.com, a foreclosure listing service and educational Web site, uses a spreadsheet to figure the costs associated with investing in a particular property.
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