2008 Alaska Foreclosure Properties Not As Bad As in 1987′
Alaska officials pegged the total number of foreclosure properties in 2008 in the Palmer district to be 275. Flashback to 1987, and the same area reported 1,693 foreclosure properties, with less houses and people back then than it is today. The Palmer district covers areas from Sheep Mountain to Willow.
According to Jerry Moses, Prudential Jack White/Vista Real Estate associate broker, about 80 percent of houses in the real estate market in the latter part of 1980 were foreclosure properties.
Moses, who has been working in the real estate market since 1983, said that during the 1980s, prices of homes declined by nearly 50 percent when foreclosure properties shot up. He noted that houses that were valued for about $200,000 were sold back then for $80,000.
Real-estate agent Uli Johnson recalled the effects of foreclosures on the area back then. He remembered the abandoned houses, the empty subdivisions, the number of banks that closed and the interest rates that doubled from 8 percent to 16 percent.
Johnson handled about 50 foreclosure properties in the latter years of 1980. She claimed that over a dozen other real estate brokers handled foreclosure properties at that time.
Today, Johnson is only one of the few real estate brokers who handle foreclosure properties, and she currently has 14 distressed properties on her portfolio.
Meanwhile, a report from Alaska’s labor department showed that the state’s 1,131 foreclosure was the third from the bottom in the country in 2008. The figures represented the highest for 15 years. However, the 2008 data was way below the record foreclosure rate of 6,821 in 1988.
But the labor department’s data did not bring any relief to 275 distressed families in the state who are facing the threat of losing their properties to foreclosures.
Some of them defaulted on their mortgage payments because they lost their jobs, while others took out a mortgage for the second time which caused exorbitant monthly payments.
On the other hand, the Susitna-Matanuska Borough experienced an increased in repo homes but not to the extent where it influence market assessments. Dave Dunivan, borough assessor, explained that market assessments will only be affected when foreclosure homes begin pulling down home values in neighborhoods.
Mortgage holders and real estate professionals are optimistic that the borough’s housing market is stabilizing after its rapid increased in values.
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