The number of Washington-area foreclosures are falling, but there will be more to go before the market is fully recovered. Stephen Fuller, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, says there will be more foreclosures, but far fewer than the economy-shaking deluge of 2008 and for a different reason.
"We expect there will be a second wave, but nothing of the magnitude we saw in 2008," says Fuller. "That wave was tied to subprime lending. This one will be more of a result of an extended length of unemployment. The Washington area does not have the significant magnitude of unemployment like some other areas of the country," he says, "but we do have 100,000 more people unemployed than we did a year ago."
As a result, the jurisdictions experiencing the highest number of foreclosures changed somewhat. The first wave of foreclosures two and three years ago hit Virginia's Prince William County hard. While three ZIP codes in Woodbridge, in Prince William County, still lead the area in the number of foreclosures, all three locales showed a 20 percent-plus improvement in foreclosure filings when compared with April 2009. Meanwhile, four of the area's top-10 foreclosure ZIP codes are in Prince George's County, including spots in Fort Washington, Upper Marlboro Hyattsville and Capitol Heights, according to RealtyTrac, a foreclosure analysis and statistics firm. SOURCE: Washington Examiner
No comments:
Post a Comment