Foreclosures aren't always kind to renters...
Nearly 80 Baltimore City apartment tenants have been evicted from their homes this year, all because the buildings they live in have been sold in foreclosure.
The evicted tenants often don't know about their building's plight until it's too late. Some even continue to pay rent to their former landlords, only to be evicted by new owners who claim their tenants haven't paid rent in months. As a group, according to one city official, the renters could soon emerge as the latest victims of the rising tide of mortgage foreclosures sweeping the nation.
"We kind of thought this was starting, but what we found out [was] we had more and more tenants calling to say, 'Hey, I'm being evicted,' " said Reginald Scriber, deputy commissioner for community services at the Baltimore City Housing Authority. "It was clear to me that the tenants didn't know their rights."
The red-hot housing market of just a few years ago turned many area residents into real estate investors, hoping to buy and quickly sell properties at a handsome profit in just a matter of months. When the market cooled, many of those investors were left with homes they couldn't sell, and they turned to the rental market to keep them afloat of their mortgages until the market picked up again.
Labels:
House prices have still a long way to fall.....
A new study conducted by Morris Davis, a former staff economist at the Fed, and Andreas Lehnert and Robert F. Martin, two current Fed economists, shows there is an unprecedented divergence between rents and home prices. Between 1960 and 1995, rents and house prices rose at relatively the same rate. Rents fluctuated between 5 percent and 5.5 percent of home prices during this period.
In 1996, the market started to change. House prices climbed rapidly--much faster than rents. Within ten years, the cost of buying had more than doubled. The cost of renting did not. By 2006, the rent-price ratio fell to the historically low level of 3.5 percent--approximately 30 percent less than its long-term average.
• The vacancy rate for owner-occupied homes stands at a record 2.8 percent. A year ago, the vacancy rate was 2.1 percent.
• One rental home in ten is currently vacant, looking for tenants.
• Of 127.3 million housing units in the United States, 17.6 million were vacant at the end of the quarter, including 2.2 million vacant units that were for sale and 4 million for rent.
• Compared with a year ago, the housing stock increased by 1.9 million, with vacant units rising by 1.5 million and occupied units rising by 400,000.
In total, there are over 6.2 million homes either for sale or for rent. Moreover, existing home sales fell by a record 8.7 percent this month. Time to phone up the landlord. It is a good time to negotiate a lower rent.
I rent, I rent, I rent, I live with my parents........
Hey! You've won a ride back to the top
2