14 Million Empty Houses, Condos and Apartments -- Short Sales and Foreclosures Abound

Singita Resort ("Place of Miracles")Along the Western Corridor of the Serengeti, Africavia FreshomeRead Real Estate News updated daily.Visit our website @ www.flhotproperties.com On the left sidebar, find links to useful local and industry sites.Find out what's happening in real estate!In our current real estate market, buyers and their Realtors are hard put to avoid short sales and foreclosures in their housing search. From Sun-Sentinel's housing blog, House Keys:Judy Friedmar, a stat queen for Xima Real Data in Pembroke Pines, crunched the numbers and found that nine out of 10 for-sale listings in our part of the world are distressed properties.Ninety percent!1 in 9 homes in the US are vacant according to USAToday:From Maine to Hawaii, millions of new McMansions, post-World War II bungalows, modern downtown lofts, exurban town homes and inner-city row houses sit empty. This unprecedented glut of vacant homes — one in nine homes across the USA, according to the Census Bureau — will change the real estate landscape for years.Already, rock-bottom prices in the hardest-hit markets are attracting first-time home buyers who could not afford a home during boom times. Some areas may see real estate values stabilize by the end of this year, as buyers seeking bargains begin to reduce the backlog of homes for sale. At the same time, the availability of rental housing will widen, potentially pushing down the cost of renting."We overproduced by 1 million new units," says Edward Glaeser, economist at Harvard University. "Now we have to work our way through the stock."What happens to the 14 million empty houses, condominiums and apartments and the 9.4 million that are for sale? How long will it take to absorb this massive and unprecedented oversupply of housing?"Two more years," Glaeser says. His is one of the more optimistic estimates. Projections by housing analysts range from as early as this year in some areas to as late as 2014 in others. USA Today has posted a state-by-state housing recovery interactive predicting the year housing supplies will dwindle to the point that new construction will be necessary to meet demand. Prediction for FL is 2010.And those signs of life in that vacant home nearby? Don't be so sure it's the new owners or renters. NYTimes reports that many of these vacant homes have been taken over by squatters:Michael Stoops, executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said about a dozen advocacy groups around the country were actively moving homeless people into vacant homes — some working in secret, others, like Take Back the Land, operating openly.In addition to squatting, some advocacy groups have organized civil disobedience actions in which borrowers or renters refuse to leave homes after foreclosure.The groups say that they have sometimes received support from neighbors and that beleaguered police departments have not aggressively gone after squatters.