Monthly Archives: August 2011

It shouldn’t surprise, but it still does: In Michigan, foreclosures (in some form or another, including pre-foreclosures) and bank-owned properties accounted for a staggering 40% of all residential real estate sales in the quarter ending June 30, 2011.   In a report published by RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosures, the average foreclosure in Michigan sold for $70,765, a hefty 40% discount off the State average. Bank-owned buyers did even better, getting close to a 46% discount. And pre-foreclosure sales—sales …

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The average time for the foreclosure process—from the time of the first notice to the completed foreclosure—has ballooned to a staggering 400 days. Instead of keeping these bad bets on their books that long, however, the nation’s biggest banks are responding by encouraging delinquent and underwater borrowers to pursue short sales.   By definition, the lender loses money at a short sale, wherein the lender approves a sale by the borrower for less than the loan amount, with the lender—not …

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