Todays news on www.forbes.com describes what many timeshare owners already know: timeshare loans are increasingly getting behind and defaulting. The Fitch ratings say that “total timeshare delinquencies increased 4.1 percent in September, compared with 3.1 percent for the same period in 2007.” Now may be the time to go ahead and sell your timeshare. If you are not using your timeshare it will quickly become an unused luxury you’d be better off without.
The number of homeowners dealing with foreclosure is mounting. Nationwide, almost 766,000 homes received at least one foreclosure-related notice from July through September, according to Realty Trac. That’s up 71% compared to the same time a year before.
And it’s only going to get worse.
Expect already high foreclosure rates in Jacksonville, Naples and Miami to increase by 14% to 15% next year thanks to bottomless home prices and job loss.
“It’s so far from recovery,” says Doug Duncan, chief economist of Fannie Mae (nyse: FNM – news – people ). He says the ability to sell a home in the Sunshine State is not related to price, especially in the condo sector. “You can drop the price to zero and not sell a brand new property because there’s no one there to buy it.”
In Depth: America’s Next Foreclosure Capitals
As a result, many would-be sellers confronting rapidly falling prices are opting to walk away from their homes.
It”s not much better in California, home to five of the top 10 cities on our list, including Fresno, Santa Cruz, Merced and Santa Barbara. Here, foreclosures are expected to rise between 11% and 14% next year. Job growth figures are better than in Florida, and new housing permits have begun to bottom out, cutting into supply. Even though prices are down, transaction activity has surged 17% in San Diego, 21% in Los Angeles and 32% in Sacramento from last year, according to Radar Logic, a New York-based research firm.
