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Published Thursday, July 07, 2011 in Local

Five straight months: Local foreclosures continue downward trend

By Jeff Bishop

The Newnan Times-Herald

Local foreclosures continue their steady downward trend, as this month's 153 foreclosure-related advertisements in The Times-Herald's legal section is down 14 percent from the 178 ads listed in July 2010.

That's down 7.8 percent from last month's 166 ads, and it marks five straight months of decreases -- seven decreases in the past 12 months. The number is also down 9.4 percent from July 2009.

The 153-ad total is also the lowest number of foreclosure-related ads listed in The Times-Herald in more than two years. The last time the number was as low as 153 was in February 2009. The number of foreclosure-related ads is still high, however, remaining in the triple digits -- whereas prior to the housing collapse the number of ads was routinely only in the double digits.

That number also doesn't include delinquent tax sales, which are tracked separately. There are 59 of those listed.

Many of the tax sales come from failed or stalled residential developments. Property owners listed on the county tax sale are mostly LLCs, many of which hold multiple properties, including Peachtree Valley, Prodigy Properties, Reese Builders & Developers, Roadrunner Resorts, Southern Land Resources, Smart Growth Development, Secured Realty & Investments, Scott Neely Construction, and Tonka Trucking.

Many of the other listed properties will never reach the actual foreclosure stage, as property owners either come up with the money owed to the mortgage holder, work out a deal with them, or fight it in court.

The listed properties are from all over Coweta County -- including West Grantville Road, Bethlehem Church Road in Moreland, Rock House Road and Dolly Nixon Road in Senoia, Winchester Drive and Tomahawk Drive in Sharpsburg, The Promenade and Paces Landing Trail in Newnan, and multiple other properties.

While locally the foreclosure picture may be improving, foreclosure rates in the Atlanta metro area have increased for the month of April (the latest month for which figures are available) over the same period last year, according to CoreLogic.

According to newly released data from CoreLogic on foreclosures for the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta area, the rate of foreclosures among outstanding mortgage loans is 2.98 percent for the month of April 2011, an increase of .22 percentage points compared to April of 2010 when the rate was 2.76 percent.

Foreclosure activity in the metro Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta area is lower than the national foreclosure rate, which was 3.47 percent for April 2011, representing a 0.49 percentage point difference.

Also in Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Marietta, the mortgage delinquency rate has decreased. According to CoreLogic data for April 2011, 9.24 percent of mortgage loans were 90 days or more delinquent compared to 10.27 percent for the same period last year, representing a decrease of 1.03 percentage points.

Dennis Lockhart, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, recently said that overall "residential real estate remains depressed" in the area.

"Home sales have not shown any clear trend of improvement," he said. New home sales are down 80 percent from their peak.

"The inventory of new homes is now at a historical low," said Lockhart. "This is clearly evident in Atlanta."

Home prices overall are down 30 percent from their peak. Lockhart said new home construction is not likely to rebound locally anytime soon.

"It is unlikely that residential growth will contribute significantly to our GDP growth" in the near term, Lockhart said.

But perhaps Coweta County, at least, is coming out of the worst of it. Coweta County and its cities have plenty of developed subdivision lots that have never been built on, but conditions aren't as bad here as they are in other areas, according to Steve Palm of Smart Numbers, LLC.

Palm recently named Coweta, Fayette and Forsyth counties as places that have healthier housing markets and will probably recover more quickly. Bloomberg Businessweek magazine also just named Coweta County the "Best Affordable Place" to live in Georgia.

Things appear to be recovering the quickest in Senoia, where 20 new home construction permits have already been issued this year. There were 33 issued in 2010.

Newnan and the county are also building again. In 2010, Coweta County's building department issued 237 permits for new home construction. So far this year, more than 76 permits have been issued. The city of Newnan's building department has issued more than 40 permits for new residential construction in 2011.

CoreLogic recently released its May Home Price Index (HPI) which shows that home prices in the U.S. increased on a month-over-month basis. According to the CoreLogic HPI, national home prices, including distressed sales, increased by 0.8 percent in May 2011 compared to April 2011, the second consecutive month-over-month increase.

"Two consecutive months of month-over-month growth and continued relative strength in the non-distressed market segment are positive seasonal signs in the housing market. Slowly declining shadow inventory and stabilized negative equity levels are also positive signs. Nonetheless, the fragile economic recovery is still critical to the long-term recovery in the housing market," said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic.

Here’s the month-by-month breakdown for foreclosures in Coweta County:

• Aug. 2010 — 253 (up from 196 in 2009, or 29 percent).

• Sept. 2010 — 199 (down from 265 in 2009, or -25 percent)

• Oct. 2010 — 237 (up from 207 in 2009, or 19 percent).

• Nov. 2010 — 307 (up from 185 in 2009, or 65.9 per cent).

• Dec. 2010 — 199 (down from 230 in 2009, or -13.4 percent).

• Jan. 2011 — 217 (up from 170 in 2010, or 17 percent).

• Feb. 2011 — 227 (up from 216 in 2010, or 5.09 per cent).

• March 2011 — 235 (down from 254 in 2010, or -7.5 percent).

• April 2011 — 159 (down from 216 in 2010, or -26 percent).

• May 2011 — 183 (down from 198 in 2010, or -7.5 percent).

• June 2011 — 166 (down from 236 in 2010, or -29.6 percent).

• July 2011 — 153 (down from 178 in 2010, or -14 percent).

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