Real Estate Crisis Gives Birth to “Foreclosure Tours”
Posted on November 5, 2008
Filed Under Foreclosures | Leave a Comment
It’s a scenario becoming all too familiar to millions of Americans today: an adjustable loan rises much higher than a homeowner can possibly afford to pay and the lender will not refinance into a fixed rate loan, so the home goes into foreclosure. One day the homeowner is removed, the locks on the doors are changed, and one more family hits the streets with nowhere to go.
While many of these homeowners find family members or friends to live with, the number of homeless people in America is rising dramatically. There are even tent cities popping up in most major cities, usually consisting of RVs and portable tents occupied by people who no longer have a home.
Out of this nationwide tragedy comes the South Florida Foreclosure Tour. For twenty-five dollars a person, potential home buyers will be driven around particular areas to look at homes that have been fallen into foreclosure. These people will enjoy donuts and coffee while looking at properties that could potentially be a cheap buy in the near future. If the current homeowners consent, they will be allowed to inside the homes and have a look around. The first tour will be on October 11 and it will tour the top residential foreclosures in the Delray Beach area. If foreclosure tourists end up purchasing a home shown on the tour, they will be refunded their twenty-five dollar touring fee.
South beach is not the first place these foreclosure tours have popped up. They have successfully been offered in other states such as Nevada and California. The twenty-five dollar fee to be charged by the South Florida Foreclosure Tour is thought to be a good idea because it will prevent a lot of people from just going along for the ride and free food. The tours are meant to help get the real estate market going again by showing potential home buyers what houses are on the market, or might be on the market in the near future.
With more and more homes going into foreclosures on a daily basis and banks appealing to the federal government to bail them out of complete financial failure, there should be unending neighborhoods for more foreclosure tours to parade. Yet with the rapid downturn in the overall American economy it remains to be seen how many interested buyers will actually be drawn to these homes.
For the drastically rising number of homeowners stuck on the other side of the changing locks, the tours are a bad sign of where our economy—and their lives—are headed. The pressure is now on the federal government to not only bail out the big banks going down as a result of millions of failed mortgages, but to bail out these homeowners as well.
While they wait for some sort of help to come save their homes from foreclosure, tours such as this one in Florida will likely crop up in major cities all across the country, provided there are buyers who can afford the purchase.
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