The bright side of foreclosure – opportunity for first time buyers

Carson City, NV – While staggering foreclosure numbers are a sad sign of our economic times, many of those tragic stories are providing a ray of hope to one group of citizens – first-time home buyers.

States that report high numbers of foreclosures are seeing a severe decline in real estate values. Those dropping prices are providing opportunity to a group of buyers previously priced out: middle-class families with steady jobs, who are buying a home for the first time.

Sales of existing homes across the country rose 5.1% in February according to the National Association of Realtors. Much of the increase was from the sale of foreclosed homes. Real estate agents and mortgage lenders in Arizona, Florida, Nevada and other states hit hard by the bust say they began to notice rising interest among first-time buyers a few months ago, as prices dropped by more than a third.

Brent Hart, a Mortgage Planner with the Reno branch of PrimeLending, is seeing a big change in the make-up of his clientele. “95% of my clients are first time home buyers that couldn’t afford to buy three years ago,” explains Brent. "They are jumping at the chance to buy a very nice home under $200,000. Affordability has returned to our local housing market."

In addition to dropping home prices, there is a huge inventory of homes on the market and sellers are increasingly motivated to unload their properties. First-time buyers do not have the burden of selling a home that may have experienced extreme depreciation in the past few years. To this buyer’s market, add home financing programs that target first-time buyers almost exclusively, like NRHA’s Home at Last™ Mortgage Credit Certificate program, and a one-time federal home buyer tax credit – part of the housing rescue plan passed in February. Click here to learn more about the Home at Last™ program or contact Lisa Dayton at 775-887-1795, extension 126.