Courtesy of Virginia Business Magazine, here is a good article on how Virginia’s housing market has fared in 2007, despite trouble nationwide with foreclosures. As stated in the article,

“At a time when foreclosures are soaring and some mortgage lenders have gone out of business, plenty of homebuilders would gladly trade places with Genuario. And homeowners in other states can’t help but look at their counterparts in Virginia with envy, because home prices here continue to outperform the nation’s. That’s one piece of encouraging news in what has been a bruising year for the housing industry.”

Additionally, click here for a very bad scan of a nice chart that was included in the article on Virginia Foreclosures FILINGS By County.

As you can see from the graphic, about 1 household out of every 196 households are subject to filing for foreclosure. However, in Virginia, only 1 out of every 411 homes are subject. Virginia has avoided quite a bit of the foreclosure mess. The two closest counties to Charlottesville that are listed- Orange and Culpeper counties- have 1 foreclosure FILING for every 132 and 96 households, respectively. Our local area hovers at about a 1% foreclosure FILING rate, which really is not a terrible statistic. Following the trend that the majority of foreclosures are a result of subprime loans, failures at flipping, and unscrupulous lending practices, it is probably safe to say that most of our neighbors here in the Charlottesville area will be relatively protected from impending foreclosures or short sales.

Over 80% of all foreclosures are in 5 states – and Virginia is not one of them. Currently, the top 5 foreclosure states are California, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Texas, with Virginia currently falling at #21 in the nation. Compared to 148,000 in California; 86,000 in Florida; 47,000 in Ohio; and 44,000 in both Michigan and Texas; Virginia looks great with it’s mere 8,000 foreclosure sales in 2007. With an estimated 3,300,000 households in Virginia, this would leave us with less than a 0.01% ACTUAL foreclosure rate in the state. Back to the first article, on median home prices, we see

“Still, compared with states such as Florida, Nevada and California — which experienced huge building booms and busts — Virginia is holding up well. For instance, the median price for a Virginia home was higher in September than for the same time in 2006, a stark contrast to what’s happening nationally. In September, the national median existing-home price for all housing types dropped 4.2 percent to $211,700, while it rose by 5.53 percent in Virginia to $229,000. In fact, the Virginia Association of Realtors reports that a Virginia home purchased in 2002 at the median price of $144,480 appreciated 58 percent in the past five years.” 

However, all is not rosy.

“Virginia has one of the highest year-over-year increases (in foreclosure filings) in the past months. It’s catching up with some of the other states,”

says Daren Blomquist, a spokesman for RealtyTrac. While the bulk of these filings are occurring in Northern Virginia, Charlottesville will certainly see some evidence of the shift as well.