Plymouth County Real Estate Market Reflects National Distress
Each month, the Registry issues a report highlighting the real estate activity of the previous month, including sales, mortgages and foreclosures. A review of these reports over the past several months quickly reveals the affect the national economy, and in particular the crisis in the financial and real estate sectors, have had on Plymouth County. Located on this website under “Register’s Monthly Report,” you can see in real numbers from reports over one year ago how the increasing foreclosure notices and foreclosure deeds showed cracks in what was believed to be a strong national financial system.
Over the past six months, we saw a steady decline in the volume of mortgages, an indication of the national credit crisis. We were also hearing from real estate brokers about the difficulty in getting financing for sales they had negotiated. The decline in the number of mortgages through September 2008 compared to the same period in 2007 illustrates the affect that the combination of declining homes values, tighter lending standards and the inability of those in distress to renegotiate their loans have had on the marketplace. Until we see an increase in the number of mortgages, indicating greater refinancing activity, the market will remain stagnant.
Two new federal financial initiatives are intended to result in a write-down of principal balances on certain loans and terms of certain mortgages. Because that is such an important component of the recent recovery efforts, I have asked our Information Systems Department to track the filings of amended mortgages separately in order to report those statistics in future monthly reports. If there are other relevant issues you would like to see addressed in these reports, please email us your suggestions for consideration.
