What the government isn’t telling you about imposed moratoriums and loss mitigation programs

In this post I'll talk about how the government's moratoriums and loss mitigation programs have affected foreclosures and shadow inventory.

Shadow inventory is made up of all the properties that are in foreclosure or headed toward foreclosure that haven't hit the market yet. There are 7 million homes in this shadow inventory category. What the government isn't telling you is that their moratoriums and loss mitigation programs created a huge surge of foreclosures that are about to pop.

Their effort to decrease foreclosures has backfired.

According to the National Association of Realtors, there were 3.6 Million unsold homes in September. You think there are a lot of homes on the market now? There are 7 Million more coming that the government has created in this shadow foreclosure inventory. That's 2 times the amount of homes that are currently on the market now!

The government's Making Home Affordable (MHA) modification program and FHA's Hope for Homeowners refinance program DO NOT WORK for borrowers that are too wealthy or owe too much
on their homes. The number of foreclosures for high end and luxury homes is increasing and there are a ton of luxury homes in this shadow inventory.

So what does all of this mean to you as a real estate investor?

Opportunity, a lot of opportunity to help high-end homeowners by offering them a short sale while making a killing in the process.

So when can we expect to see the surge in foreclosures from this shadow inventory?

We are in the first phase of shadow inventory right now and it will continue through 2010. The second wave will continue into 2011 because the national foreclosure moratoriums ended in March 2009 and the government intensified its HOPE NOW Alliance program as well as its Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). These programs were released in the first week of March 2009 but the problem was that the services and lenders did not receive training until the middle of June. Then, the programs had to be updated because they weren't effective and they became more complicated to implement effectively.

This created a huge amount of people that have not paid their mortgage and their houses have not been taken back by the lenders yet. Basically the government only delayed the inevitable foreclosure process but they made it worse because all of the homes will be entering foreclosure at the same time and with more debt owed on the mortgages. 

This is the ultimate short sale environment. These homes are ripe for the picking. Many of these homeowners have thrown their hands up and have vacated the houses. These vacant houses are gold for you as a real estate investor.

The third phase of shadow inventory will be borrowers that have exhausted their options on long term government sponsored payment plans, forbearances, and failed modifications. These will show up in 2011 and continue into 2012 as their foreclosure timelines were delayed or reset by the latest HAMP efforts.