Albuquerque Home Delinquencies and Foreclosures

Transcript Snippet: “Tego:

I wanted to address actually kind of a, a thing that came up had some comment about that, you know, the, that the housing market is in some weird place and, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s doomed and there’s all kinds of stuff going on and there’s a bunch of foreclosures in the, that are gonna be coming. And, you know, I hadn’t, I hadn’t heard that in a while because it’s just so like not a thing. And so I, I did some digging into it, really looking at the data about you know, what’s going on with, with home delinquencies and foreclosures and potential for foreclosures and filings for, for foreclosures in particular, in, in our market. And, you know, the, the thing is it’s, it’s been in an all time low, it continues to be in an all time low. Now there was a huge spike percentage wise, like double the number of foreclosures from 2021 to 22. We know why. Yeah, exactly. Because

Tracy:

There was a moratorium, right. So of course it’s gonna be double,

Tego:

Right? Yeah. So, you know, I, I saw these headlines saying that foreclosure’s double it’s like, well, yeah, when you go from one to two, that’s still double, okay. That’s not, you know, I’m exaggerating. But the point is the number of foreclosures that are happening in our market are extremely low. Like, like all time low. And, and, and then you go, okay, well, let’s take the next step. Okay. How many people, you know, have had a foreclosure filing, right. And you look at that data and it’s, it’s pretty thin. There’s not a whole lot of foreclosure filings happening. And then you take it to the next progression, which is okay, how many people are delinquent on their mortgage, you know, behind on their mortgage, not able to make their mortgage. And that number’s extremely low. And, and I, and, and I apologize, I don’t have in front of me, but I’m thinking the number somewhere around 2%, maybe two and half percent in all of New Mexico. So it’s, it’s a very small number that could potentially go into foreclosure. And, and the, the, the reality is even if every single one of those homes, which isn’t a whole lot came on the market tomorrow, that wouldn’t put any supply strain over supply strain on our market.

Tracy:

Right. And if those folks that aren’t able to make their mortgage and they are facing possible foreclosure, wanna reach out to us. We have some solutions, right? First of all, they probably have equity in their home, and they may be able to walk away with money if they sold it, versus just you know, didn’t, didn’t work with someone to help them out of that. So

Tego:

Well, and that’s one more part of that whole foreclosure conversation is the, the, the type of equity people have in their homes is at an all time hall. The amount of equity people have in their homes all time high. Right. And so, you know, people aren’t just gonna walk away from that. That’s very different than 2000 seven eight, when, when a lot of people didn’t have any equity or actually negative equity on their homes.

Tracy:

Let me just throw this in there, though. Okay. If people are behind on their house payment, or, you know, they are over overloaded with credit card debt or whatever, and they don’t have the income to claw their way out of it. So to, to speak, I get, yeah, sometimes you stop answering the phone, right. It’s just too hard to face bill collectors and things. And then, and they don’t realize that maybe by selling their house and reaching out for help, they might actually have equity in their house. They could tap into to help them pay off other things, or make arrangements with other people or other debt collectors to start making small payments and maybe negotiate what they owe down. Right. This isn’t our area of expertise, but we’ve seen it happen quite a bit with people where once somebody says, Hey, you know, this is happening to me and I’m embarrassed about it, but, you know, we can talk about it and see if we can help them get their house sold so that they do have possibly walk away with some money and a plan to help getting themselves back on their feet.

Tego:

Just one more thing on this conversation. I heard a housing, an analyst that I listen to and read all the time, and there’s a bunch of them out there, but, but one of his quotes is the us homeowners balance sheets are the best they have ever, ever been best credit scores, best equity ever. Right. And so this whole idea that there’s gonna be this whole bunch of people that, that are in this distress sales situation, it it’s, it’s just not there. Right. It’s just not there. So, okay. I think so, let, yeah,

Tracy:

Go ahead. You know, we don’t know the future, right. Tego of course. And you know, we’re not all about doom and gloom. We, we try to look at the statistics and report what we see, right. And when you’re at 1100 homes for sale, and we know we could have four or 5,000 and be in a more balanced market, we’re a long ways from four or 5,000 homes. So what, what analysts predict and you study this all day, every day, it seems like, is, you know, we’re not going to have a pull back in prices, but maybe a slow down in the growth of home prices or a flattening.