From Insidenova.com
Occoquan saw one. Woodbridge, 481. And Prince William as a whole? A total of 1,043.
That’s the number of foreclosures for July for the county, according to RealtyTrac, a group that compiles information on the housing market nationwide.
The rest of the breakdown in the county for July: Manassas, 218 foreclosures; Triangle, 84; Bristow, 74; Dumfries, 73; Gainesville, 67; Haymarket, 31; Nokesville, 12; and Catharpin, 2.
The figures aren’t so dismal when viewed through the context of a year. In July 2008, the number of foreclosures in the county stood about 1,200.
It sounds like things are still mighty grim. The article continues stating:
In all of Virginia, 6,406 foreclosures were added in July, representing a 23 percent jump over June figures, and an 11 percent hike from July of 2008. Between January and July, total foreclosures for the state hit 39,210. And despite lower prices and a decided buyer’s market, sales haven’t been so brisk. In the six-month period that began in January, only 10,229 of those foreclosed homes have been resold.
Do these numbers mean that Prince William County respresented 1/6th of all foreclosures in the state for the month of July? If that is the case, then why are our elected officials not horrified?
What seems to be troubling our elected officials is commercial real estate. Commercial real estate market is still declining, vacancies are up and delinquency rates on commerical loans have increased. Commerical real estate woes can further erode the county tax base. Supervisors attempted to keep tax rates down in order to not overburden the commercial sector.
Meanwhile, home sales are soaring because of fire sale prices here in Prince William. Regardless of how much of an improvement Prince William is seeing, all that improvement is diminished by reading of the murder/suicide of the couple in Dumfries whose house was foreclosed.
The couple was on a bad luck streak. The wife, army veteran Julie Fay who served in Desert Storm, was in poor health and had just returned from burying her mother in Colorado to find her house had gone to foreclosure and she and husband Wallis no longer owned the property. They had lived there for 13 years. Sadly, both the Fays were found dead in their home. No one knows what really happened yet. Manassas News and Messengers gives more details.
These tragic deaths should simply not have happened. Where was the help we keep hearing out on TV, in newspapers, on the radio? Obviously there was none for the Fays. They just added to the statistics.
Instead, our elected local leaders choose to say after a murder and suicide over a foreclosure that had the couple gone to them, they could have received help–as if it’s the dead couple’s fault they contacted the wrong people for help.
A little late for claiming local government could have helped, isn’t it? Do our elected leaders not read the newspapers? They knew this was happening and instead of intervening and directing the couple, they overlooked the situation.
Just because residents don’t know where to go for help doesn’t mean residents should be ignored, especially when the plight of the poor is so well advertised.
Funny no one seems to know where to go for help.
@Moon-howler
I wonder if the BOCS doesn’t like to advertise these programs because they know they will have swarms of people coming to them for help.
Has anyone here ever heard of a county program to help people going into foreclosure?
@Posting As Pinko
“Has anyone here ever heard of a county program to help people going into foreclosure?” Prior to this tragedy, that is.
I believe Supervisor Principi has held several workshops about stopping foreclosures/refinancing a bad mortgage.
This story about the Fay couple is just tragic and sad.
Unless I totally misread something, 1/6th of the foreclosures in the state were in Prince William County. Yet people are cheering and backslapping over our local economy because houses are selling…lots of them way under value.
I just don’t get it.
Classified ad sections – 8-24-2009
– WaPo – 14 pages, 11 are foreclosure notices – 1/2 page PWC
– N&M – 4 pages, 2 are foreclosure notices – all PWC
Will believe we are out of the woods when traditional classified
ads (jobs, cars, homes/apartments,etc.) start to outnumber
foreclosure notices).
I can think of two reasons why the BOCS wants to downplay the foreclosure problem. One is that the more you talk about it, the worse it gets. It just contributes to the bad reputation we already have. Also, if everyone finds out how badly we are paying for the Immigration Resolution, it makes the Board look bad for voting for it. Even though the six moderates on the Board defeated Stewart and Stirrup to remove the only real objectionable part of the law (racial profiling). Because fixing it is good, but allowing it to get that bad is, well, bad. So they feel some responsibility for the bad reputation, foreclosures, and the economic consequences even though they fixed the law on the books.
Take a BIG Whiff of the “Hope and Change”!!!
Note – “The rest of the breakdown of foreclosures for the
county: Manassas, 218…” . What area is being discussed?
Manassas City or the PWC area that calls itself Manassas or
both? How about Manassas Park? Know for a fact that
Manassas City’s number is far less than half of 218.
Slow, you are still fractious.
Hopefully you didn’t expect Obama to take care of our foreclosures? That is asking a little much, don’t you think? 😉
I thought he had “all the answers”!!
You never heard that here or at least from me. I felt given all the options which included looking at all 4 people who were running that perhaps he offered the least objectionable ticket. Translation: Palin was a deal breaker for me. I just couldn’t do it. That does not mean I did not have concerns. The administrators here had mixed feelings on the election, therefore everyone spoke for themselves or said nothing.
I have never thought any one candidate had all the answers in any election. I have been disappointed too many times in the past to think that.
I’ve seen a number of non-foreclosure townhouses going up for sale in Point of Woods – and the prices have increased quite a bit too – from the very low $100K range to an average of $140K or so. Some appear to be foreclosures that have been bought, remodeled, and put back up for sale. At least in Point of Woods, the number of houses for sale as foreclosures is way down, and the proportion of non-foreclosure sales is definitely rising rapidly. Quite different from even 6 months ago, from what I can tell.
If I was going through foreclosure, I do not know if I would think to call the county. I’d be calling my bank, my accountant, and federal government agencies. The county does advertise programs in the local papers, puts announcements on their website, the government cable channel and promotes the programs through the local supervisors that have newsletters and websites, but people going through foreclosure probably aren’t looking at those types of things. Paper delivery might be one of the first things you’d cut if you were having trouble making ends meet. They are probably too busy looking for jobs or freaking out. I don’t see that the county can do anything else in terms of advertising that would help. When you have financial problems, you avoid the mail, the telephone and you don’t read for leisure.
I also think there is more to that story of the tragic couple. Military retirement for the wife’s over 20 years enlisted isn’t a gold mine, but it would have been enough to make the mortgage payment plus utilities plus they had their jobs. Their health care would have been covered because of her military retirement, so there is much more to their sad story. My in laws live on enlisted military retirement and they bought their home for about the same amount around the same time. They don’t have the jobs, but my FIL gets social security. They are not rolling in dough but have a nice lifestyle in Manassas. They worry about taxes going up and the price of gas, but their mortgage, utilities and healthcare is covered so they feel fairly secure. We probably will never know the real story of what was behind this tragedy.