The local Fox affiliate (Fox 25) did an "undercover" story on foreclosures in Massachusetts last night during their news broadcast. Although the report was much more bombastic than necessary (as local news stories are apparently required to be), there was a good bit of foreclosure data placed on their website. They have a list of Massachusetts towns ranked from highest to lowest foreclosure rates. I only list the top 25 below (for the complete Massachusetts list, click here):
For a point of comparison, in Massachusetts (state-wide) there have been 19,090 foreclosure deeds filed from 2006 through September 2008 out of a total residential property count 1,956,956 which equals a foreclosure percentage over the last 3 years of 0.98%. Not even 1% of the homes in Massachusetts have been foreclosed on in the past 3 years! Which is telling, I think, because of all the hype surrounding foreclosures and the national housing crisis most of the time. When you look at it state by state, though, there are clear differences market by market. There is just too much variation to declare the "foreclosure problem" a national phenomenon and happening in all areas.
Even within Massachusetts, clearly some areas have been hit much harder than others, but it is a very localized problem again. As you can see in the chart above, some areas have serious problems with high foreclosure rates. Properties being abandoned and falling into disrepair causing blight in neighborhoods often makes the problem worse. I know first hand - at Charlesgate Realty Group we handle REO (foreclosure) sales for a number of banks. Most of our listings are in hard hit areas like Dorchester, Roxbury, and East Boston (although there are a few others once in a while like in the Ritz Carlton). It's not a fun sight to walk into many of these bank owned properties to see that they have fallen into decay. When we are assigned a property, our job is to stabilize the property, put it on the market for sale, and get it back into the hands of a local owner who can rehab the property to live in it or rent it to tenants. The good news is that we have been seeing a LOT of interest on the foreclosure listings because the often sell for depressed, below market prices. Many investors are seeing the opportunity and buying these properties. Obviously, preventing the foreclosure in the first place is the best scenario, but if that is not possible, then stabilizing them and getting them sold as quickly as possible to prevent long term blight is the next best thing. So I am happy to see a lot of interest from buyers.
For Boston itself, the foreclosure problem is very localized as well, with the hardest hit areas being Dorchester, Mattapan, East Boston, Hyde Park, and Roxbury, which are all listed in the Top 25 towns with the highest percentage of foreclosures in Massachusetts from 2006-2008. Here is a detail of each of those neighborhoods by year with average home sale price and number of home sales. PLEASE NOTE: The foreclosures listed are all foreclosure deeds (single, multi-family, & condo), while the average home sale price and number of home sales only count single family sales - not multi's or condos. Not sure why it was listed that way, but that's the data they used. Original data is from The Warren Group.
Dorchester Foreclosures
Mattapan Foreclosures
East Boston Foreclosures
Hyde Park Foreclosures
Roxbury Foreclosures
There are 363 towns in all listed in the data. Here's where the other Boston neighborhoods listed in the chart stack up for 2006 - 2008:
#61 - Roslindale (106 foreclosures out of 8,011 residential properties; 1.32%)
#123 - South Boston (75 foreclosures out of 9,380 residential properties; 0.80%)
#191 - Jamaica Plain (48 foreclosures out of 9,022 residential properties; 0.53%)
#212 - Allston (15 foreclosures out of 3,165 residential properties; 0.47%)
#235 - West Roxbury (35 foreclosures out of 8,844 residential properties; 0.40%)
#278 - Charlestown (13 foreclosures out of 5,083 residential properties; 0.26%)
#295 - Boston, Downtown (51 foreclosures out of 24,743 residential properties; 0.21%)
#298 - Brighton (20 foreclosures out of 9,893 residential properties; 0.20%)
Interesting data. Hopefully, this sheds some light on the "foreclosure problem" as it exists. Some areas have major problems while others have almost none at all. That is the the difficulty in "correcting" this real estate downturn. Different areas require different approaches which doesn't lead to a nice neat solution.
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