Tuscaloosa Foreclosures for Sale

Tuscaloosa has not escaped the global economic recession and foreclosure crisis that has sprung out of the sub-prime mortgage fiasco of the summer of 2007. Arcadia Drive is a quiet street in Tuscaloosa and sat, deserted for over two years now is a three bedroom bungalow that was repossessed by the bank after the owner could no longer make the payments. The property has a backyard pool and newly fitted kitchen and the previous owner had two trucks parked in the driveway. Much of this expense was borrowed, and it all got too much all at once. Since the bank has been the owner of the property, there has been nothing done to maintain it, and so it stands desolate, still on the market, bringing down the price of the properties around it.

This is not an unfamiliar story to the Residents of the Tuscaloosa area as more and more properties fall foul of sub-prime repayment hikes. Some of the monthly hikes requested by the sub-prime mortgage lenders were as much as 35% per month, and so after the initial honeymoon period was over, the pain hit hard and fast. The fact that so many lenders have called in Notices to Default without spending time with borrowers trying to avert this disaster has had a knock-on effect on the rest of the housing marker in the local area, and house prices in Tuscaloosa has dropped dramatically.

The cold hard facts that residents of Tuscaloosa may not appreciate is that they are much better off than many of the neighbouring counties and States. Across Alabama, the rate of foreclosure sits at one house in every 2,594, whereas in Nevada it is one in every 74; the highest figure anywhere in the country for 22 straight months. However, this will be little consolation to the neighbours of the abandoned house in Arcadia Drive.

One of the reasons that Alabama has not been hit so badly in the foreclosure listings is that the focus of the sub-prime lending was in hotter investment markets such as California, Nevada, Ohio and Florida where sub-primes accounted for nearly half of all home loans in late 2007-early 2008. For Tuscaloosa the figure was only 10% and even that was low compared to other Metropolitan areas elsewhere in Alabama with an average of 14%.

One of the most obvious local effects of the fall out of the national economic crisis has been the money lenders tightening their belts and their restrictions; it is simply a lot more difficult to get onto the housing ladder in Tuscaloosa now than it was 12 months ago as banks as considerably more cautious.