If you're on the sidelines waiting to buy a property this year, because you think you're going to snatch up some foreclosures. You are sadly mistaken. There is not going to be a wave of foreclosures this year or any time soon, here's why.
15 years ago, over 9 million people were affected by foreclosure in a short sale. People thought that with the pandemic and all the changes that were happening in the world, that would happen again because so many people signed up for forbearance programs. But guess what? Almost 40% of the people who signed up for the programs have actually paid back in full and are out of those programs.
44% of people who signed up for these programs have negotiated a repayment plan and believe it, or not only 0.6% of the people who signed up for these programs are defaulting and are going to have to short sale, which is not that much at all. There are also some people who have exited the programs entirely.
The other reason why there's not going to be a wave of foreclosure is because even if there were a lot of people that are going to lose their home to foreclosure; the market can withstand absorbing over a million properties. For those of you not paying attention, that means that there's a lot more people ready and able to buy property than there are houses available. If you think that you're going to snatch up a property, that's distressed, it's not going to happen. There are way too many people with cash in the sidelines that are just going to swoop up those properties.
Lastly, the reason why we're not going to see a whole bunch of foreclosures is because people are sitting on a ton of equity. Home values have skyrocketed over the last couple of years and people have way more equity in their homes. That means that even if they were to miss a mortgage payment or sign up for one of these programs, they have enough equity in their homes to stay afloat. It's not like it was 15 years ago when people barely had any equity and then they had their mortgages adjusted and they couldn't afford the payments.
I'm sharing this with you so you can adjust your expectations. Ignore what you are hearing out there. People who are saying that they're going to be getting deals in this wave of foreclosure, but that's just not going to happen. At least that's my humble opinion.
If you have any questions let’s talk.
Don’t forget to catch up on my weekly show, Taya’s 2 Cents, where share my two cents on different real estate topics from buying and selling real estate, owning a home and more.