Foreclosures in Summit Still a Steady Business

By most accounts, the real estate market across the country and state has improved from the mortgage crisis of 2008.

For Summit County that's true as well, but there remains some fallout from the tumble the real estate market took five years ago.

Foreclosures remain a steady business in Summit County communities, where more than 12,000 properties have been sold at foreclosure auction since 2007.

The peak came in 2008, when 5,148 properties were scheduled to go to foreclosure sale and 2,897, or about 56 percent, sold at auction, according to the Summit County Sheriff’s Office.

Since 2008, the number of properties sold through foreclosure have dipped. By 2010 the total number of houses sold had fallen nearly one-third to 2,097.

Yet foreclosure sales remain steady with almost no variation in the past two years. Countywide, a total 1,841 properties sold at foreclosure in 2011 and 1,811 sold in 2012 — a difference of 30.

“For us, it’s non stop,” said Summit County Sheriff’s Lt. Aaron Piekarski.

The commander of the Summit County Sheriff’s Office Civil Bureau manages foreclosure sales at sheriff’s auction. Each week, Piekarski’s division schedules 75 properties for auction as sale orders come in from judges and magistrates in Summit County.

“As they come in we set them for sale dates in groups of 75 every single week,” Piekarski said. “You do 75, and there are 75 more there waiting.”

In a typical year, about half of the properties scheduled for auction will actually sell. The rest are canceled for various reasons ranging from the plaintiff, such as the bank or mortgage holder, dropping its lawsuit or because the property owner reached an agreement to stave off the sale.

Summit saw a total 12,365 properties sold between 2007 and 2012 at auction, but more than 23,000 had been scheduled for auction during that five-year span.

Piekarski said so far this year the sheriff’s office has scheduled about 800 properties for auction, and most of those are cases from 2012 or earlier. The county has already seen as many new cases filed in 2013.

That means, accounting for holidays and short weeks, Summit may see as many as 3,600 properties scheduled to go to foreclosure sale this year — a figure that would keep the county about even with properties scheduled for sale in 2012 and 2011.

“That’s what we’re on pace for this year to bring to sale,” he said.

Foreclosures don’t tell the whole story of the Summit County real estate market.

Yearly figures for 2012 from the Akron Area Board of Realtors for almost every market indicator show positive changes.

Properties spent fewer days on the market — 128 in 2012 compared with 134 in 2011. So they sold faster, and at a higher price. Countywide, the average sale price rose 10.6 percent from $126,192 to $139,578.

And new listings in 2012 were down nearly 10 percent from 2011.

Tony DeLuke, president of the Akron Area Board of Realtors, said when the mortgage crisis hit in 2008 Summit had a 36-month inventory of homes on the market.

“And now we’re down to 6.3,” DeLuke said. “Six is considered a balanced market, so we’re pretty close to that.

“The market is better,” he said. “There are buyers out there looking for homes. Right now our inventory is down, and things are going off the market pretty quickly once they get on the market. It’s a little frustrating for buyers because something’s listed, we look at it, set up another viewing and next thing you know it’s under contract.”

So many houses are selling so quickly now that it’s created a backlog of deeds from foreclosure auctions to process for the sheriff’s office.

That backlog has created some situations where a realtor and buyer have all the terms of a sale processed and they’re forced to wait for the deed from the sheriff’s office.

But Piekarski’s division is working with the Akron realtors board to try and keep the backlog from forcing a potential buyer to walk away because of the delay.

“We were at one time four to six months behind on deeds, and it was creating a real problem for real estate agents because everything was done and they needed the deed to file and it just wasn’t happening,” DeLuke said. “You have to remember, they’re trying to work on a backlog but there are new ones coming in all the time.”

That delay has given the pending sales index, which saw a 13.2 percent increase in 2012, a slightly skewed bump.

Aside from that hitch, it’s been mostly smooth sailing in recent months for Summit’s real estate market, DeLuke said.

And he’s expecting the market to continue improving.

“A couple years ago, when I was showing houses, I would maybe show a person eight homes in a day,” DeLuke said. “Of those eight, six or seven of those would have been foreclosures, vacant homes. It was unbelievable. It’s nowhere near that now.

“We’re really optimistic,” he said. “We’re all busy. I think it’s going to keep improving like it is. It’s not going to be an overnight thing.”