Despite Government promises to help keep people in their homes in the downturn, repossessions are soaring. More than 100 homes a day are being seized by lenders - that’s a massive 50 per cent up on last year and the highest level since the early Nineties.

But as RICHARD DYSON explains, not everyone is a loser.

The investors - making a killing

The dinner-jacketed staff are welcoming, the sales patter slick, the surroundings plush. Welcome to the first auction of repossessed homes by American firm REDC (Real Estate Disposition Corporation).
Tempted by the growing number of home repossessions in Britain, REDC launched its UK arm, auctiontoday.co.uk, last month to offer a ‘wide selection of properties at auction prices’. More than 400 homes are listed on its website - all repossessions.
The function room at the Hilton Hotel in Gateshead near Newcastle upon Tyne is packed with eager bidders keen to pick up a bargain.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk

Home sales in the Orlando market jumped nearly 48 percent, but values fell by nearly 40 percent, according to the March report from the Orlando Regional Realtor Association.

Association members reported 1,653 existing home sales in March, compared with 1,120 in the same month a year prior. Realtors also put 2,956 homes under contract last month, a far cry from March 2008’s 1,679.

The median price of all Orlando homes resales fell 37.7 percent from $217,000 in March 2008 to $137,000 last month. The area’s average interest rate fell to a record low 4.67 percent.

Association members also reported 4,906 pending sales — considered a leading indicator of future sales — in March, more than double March 2009’s 2,398.

March home resales in the Orlando area — Lake, Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties — jumped nearly 58 percent, from 1,354 homes last year to 2,139 homes this year.

http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/stories/2009/04/13/daily7.html

Single-family house prices in the state dropped about 17.1 percent in February compared to the same month in 2008, making it the fifth consecutive month that median prices have dropped by double-digit margins, according to the Warren Group, publisher of the Commercial Record.
“We didn’t see such a period of price slumps during Connecticut’s last housing downturn in the early 1990s,” said Timothy M. Warren Jr. in a statement. Warren is the chief executive of the Warren Group. “Prices won’t level off until sales activity picks up substantially for several months straight.”
The local results are mixed and the most promising news could be in Meriden.

http://www.myrecordjournal.com/site/tab1.cfm?newsid=20289419&BRD=2755&PAG=461&dept_id=592709&rfi=6

There was something that always bothered Rene Galvin when she walked in the front door of her new condo - an eye-watering, rotten egg smell that clung to the four walls and everything contained within them, from the furniture to her carpet and clothes.
She could never quite put her finger on the cause of the foul odor that seemed to pervade every pore. “I’d just stand there, look around and say to myself: ‘One day, I’ll find out whatever it is that died inside these walls’,” she says.
But there were further problems to come; mirrors that corroded around the edges, drains that rusted on the baths, pitted faucets, the television, computer, dishwasher, coffee pot, telephones, and air-conditioning system that all inexplicably broke down. Even the treasured gold-dipped necklace she wore around her neck turned black. Then there were the headaches, throat and sinus troubles.
“I had no idea what was going on. I thought ‘Boy, the Florida air sure is bad’,” she says with a wry laugh.
Humour, though, is not something that comes easily these days when she talks about her $500,000 home in Bonita Springs, Florida, that now sits empty after it was found to contain contaminated drywall from China.
The discovery of sulfur-emitting compounds within the imported construction materials has sparked a national investigation, numerous lawsuits, and a scandal that is feared to have affected as many as 100,000 homes, a majority so far in Florida. Reparations could run into the billions of dollars.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0404/p99s01-usgn.html