We’re Number One!
By Greg L | 19 April 2007 | Local Economy | 6 Comments
Prince William, including Manassas and Manassas Park, is number one in mortgage foreclosures in Northern Virginia. That’s not even in percentage terms, that’s in gross numbers. While Fairfax County has more than twice the number of housing units as Prince William, it has 28% fewer residential units in active foreclosure as of April 9th. No wonder the residential housing market is lagging in Prince William, Manassas and Manassas Park.
Courtesy of NovaBubbleFallout, here are the statistics for Northern Virginia:
Active Foreclosures 4/9/07
| County | Foreclosures | Percentage |
| Arlington | 8 | 0.008% |
| Fairfax | 183 | 0.047% |
| Loudoun | 116 | 0.124% |
| Prince William | 255 | 0.203% |
| Frederick | 24 | 0.088% |
| Fauquier | 11 | 0.045% |
| Culpeper | 18 | 0.111% |
| Stafford | 51 | 0.127% |
Here’s an example of what this is doing. In my neighborhood there’s fairly modest a house that was purchased for $212,000 in September of 2002. The house was refinanced in April of 2006 and the value was recorded in the county’s real estate records as $450,000. On January fifth, the title of the house was transferred to Deutsche Bank National Trust Company and the value was recorded as $380,092, which shows all the hallmarks of a foreclosure since banks aren’t usually in the practice of investing in real estate, especially during a market downturn. The property is now listed for sale with an asking price of $259,900. That’s a 42% drop in value since the refinance and a $120,000 loss for the bank, if the house sells at the asking price. The borrower is probably facing at least a $70,000 loss.
How would you like to have your house on the market with this property neighboring yours? As the asking price for this property rockets to the bottom, how much would you have to discount the asking price of your own property in order to remain competitive? More than you want to, certainly.
It is possible, that faced the squeeze of a high mortgage payment and rapidly vanishing equity, this homeowner just packed up and disappeared like so many others. This neighborhood has a rising number of vacant houses for sale that were previously occupied by what might be considered persons of uncertain nationality. When the subprime mortgage crisis erupted, a substantial number of these residents disappeared and their now vacant houses were not actively offered for sale or rent for several months. Now the foreclosure sales are in full swing.
Until Prince William County drags itself away from the top rank in regional foreclosures, the residential market isn’t going to improve, and the tax base for local governments will continue to erode. If we thought this was a tough budget year, what might be coming up next year if this continues will make this year’s budget struggles seem inconsequential.
Note: in the table above, “percentage” refers to the number of active foreclosures divided by the total number of residential units as reported by the 2005 Census. Prince William County’s 0.2% percentage statistic means that of every thousand residential units that exist in the county, two of them are in active foreclosure. In Arlington, that percentage (0.0086%) translates into 8.6 houses in foreclosure per hundred thousand residential units.
The opinions expressed here are solely the views of the author, and not representative of the position of any organization, political party, doughnut shop, knitting guild, or waste recycling facility, but may be correctly attributed to the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. If anything in the above article has offended you, please click here to receive an immediate apology.
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6 Comments
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Does this surprise anyone? With high percentage of illegal aliens in this area this is what happens. I’ve noticed that houses that used to have multiple families in them, now have one or two. I would think that the next step will be foreclosure on these homes also
I could see this coming a mile away and the problem will get at least 3x worse towards the end of this year in the area. Fairfax will come out of this smelling like a rose but PW and the park are gonna get buzz saw’d. There are at least 3 town homes in my development that have been empty for many months and just about every other house for a 5 square mile area in the park has a for sale sign in front of it. The fact that they approved this 35M school with the looming tax crisis is beyond me. I found out earlier this week that my mortgage just went up $40 a month. That means that 27% of my mortgage is now tax. I know of nowhere where the tax rates are that high. Couple that with the rampant illegal alien invasion and the impending real estate foreclosure crisis and that makes MP a scary place to be right now. Why oh why didn’t I sell 2 years ago when I had the chance? Why!
Your mortgage shouldn’t have gone up due to taxes (yet) as the tax bills haven’t been mailed out yet. The city just set the new tax rate this week.
I’m just glad I bought my house before the market started to go crazy.
“Creative Financing” when the interest rates were so low is all of a sudden becoming destructive instead of being so creative.
Park’d-
I hope you come to the Help Save Manassas meeting on 4/25/07. Politicians will only start listening when they know that the citizens are serious about effecting change. If they know they will be voted out of office when they don’t do what the electorate wants, they will start listening. We want to help Manassas Park residents do this. You have to be organized and you have to start being heard. HSM will help you with that.
I plan on attending the rally but don’t want to drive. So let’s get enough people together to take the bus.
Greg- I believe you said if there were enough people, someone would supply the bus for us free of charge. Is that a true statement?
What’s a few hours out of your day compared to what our elected officials will do if our voices aren’t heard on this subject.
OOP’S- The bus comment belonged on another post. But you all should come to D.C. anyway.