Foreclosures exceed total for last year

By Allison Brophy Champion

Published: June 28, 2008

Six months into the year and it’s already worse than last year.

Through June 13, a total of 187 properties — including 27 vacant lots in town — went into foreclosure this year in Culpeper, county records show.

Of those, 122 occurred within the town’s limits. The other 65 foreclosures happened in various portions of Culpeper County.

The month of February was the worst so far with 55 foreclosures, including the vacant lots.

There were 18 foreclosures in the first two weeks of this month, compared to 32 in March; 30 in April and 26 in May.

In 2007, banks foreclosed on 182 properties in all in the town and county of Culpeper.

According to a June report by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development, Virginia’s foreclosure rate is nearly half the nationwide rate, but has risen sharply largely due to “the use of high-cost, non-traditional mortgage products to purchase homes in high-cost markets that households simply could not afford.”

As those non-traditional, subprime and adjustable rate mortgages adjusted up, and continue to do so, the homeowner gets pushed out.

Culpeper County was among top Virginia counties with the highest number of those type loans in the past three years, according to the VHCD.

Today’s foreclosure problem is also caused by declining home values, like in Culpeper County, “that put homeowners ‘upside down’ with their mortgage,” the VHCD report says, “and lead to tightened credit standards that limit homeowners’ refinancing and resale opportunities.”

Nancy Heflin, president of the Greater Piedmont Area Association of Realtors, said she has never seen anything like it in her 19 years in the business.
And she doesn’t expect the picture to improve anytime soon.

“We are anticipating another flood of foreclosures in the fall,” said Heflin of Front Royal. “There’s another group of adjustments (to mortgage payments) coming and that’s where I would really like the banking industry to step in and stop it.

“They have the power,” she said of fixing interest rates at more reasonable levels.

Difficult times require difficult solutions, Heflin said.

“If I were an owner financing something and I could see they couldn’t afford it, I would back off, change the terms.”

Add in record high gas prices and people are really struggling, Heflin said.

“It was the people who the bank tried to make exceptions for because of the market we were riding like a rocket ship,” she said. “The home sales prices were escalating every year — it was 20 percent one year and 20 percent more on top of that the next year.”

Lower income citizens or people with less-than-stellar credit that banks would typically pass over for home loans suddenly qualified, Heflin said.

“But then the market stopped all these people who shouldn’t have gotten these loans were in trouble.”

Amissville real estate broker Julie Emery agreed and supposed a long road ahead of more of the same.

“I think it will take a while to work ourselves out of this,” she said. “I don’t think we will see a true stabilization of the market for two to three years because of the amount of inventory and absorption.”

The fact that Culpeper County has a lot of commuters, coupled with the high gas prices, is also contributing to the housing crisis, Emery said.

“The further out from the metro center the worse it is because gas prices are impacting the way people chose to live their lives,” she said. “I think the commuters are gone for good,” Emery said of people moving to Culpeper and working in D.C.

The good news in all this, Emery said, is that it’s a good time to buy a house, mentioning a surplus of available properties.

“If you are looking to buy a house it is not a bad time, but you need to be a little cautious,” she said of declining house values. “It depends on how long you are staying in that house.”

Plan to stay at least three to five years? A homebuyer can be comfortable that they will break even when they decide to sell, Emery said.

“But if you are in a position where you could get transferred in a year or two, people are better off renting in this market.”

Steve Baugher, executive director of the Virginia Association of Mortgage Bankers and a member of the Virginia Foreclosure Prevention Task Force, said northern Virginia has been hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis.

“I have a feeling you guys are six, eight months late coming into it,” he said of why the rate in Culpeper keeps getting dramatically worse.
“I think this thing is going to work itself through, but it’s not going to happen overnight.”

On Monday, Baugher said, he got a report indicating that some 60 percent of the home sales in northern Virginia were from bank-owned sources, or foreclosure properties.
“So there’s a heavy inventory of bank owned properties that needs to be liquidated, a lot of foreclosures properties that have to be sold,” he said.

With real estate values dropping, homeowners get frustrated, Baugher said.

“They are struggling, the house is worth less than what I paid for it so what’s the point?”

He reiterated that now is a very good time to buy a house because interest rates are low and prices are down.

Baugher urged homeowners to keep in contact with the banks.

“There are a lot of credit counselors, foreclosure counselors; the key thing is stay in touch with your lender,” he said. “Most lenders don’t want these houses back so if people cooperate, if they can hang in there … ”

Baugher said he’s never seen so many foreclosures in his 35 years in banking.

“We just came out of a frantic market, got overheated and it sort of collapsed.”

Allison Brophy Champion can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 101 or abrophy@
starexponent.com.