With US real estate prices still on the way down, most would-be real estate investors are facing issues if they need to refinance a mortgage on a property they were renting out. The mortgage resets are not exclusive to residential buyers and a lot of investors are facing problems also. Refinancing a mortgage is the big issue currently, because, whatever mis-information might be being spread around by the banks and governments, credit markets remain tight.
For the last two years, the Spanish banks have been slowly but surely turning themselves in to the biggest property owners in the country. The amount of “debt for equity,” swaps and bank repossessions is almost impossible to calculate. In fact, there is a suggestion that the banks themselves do not know exactly how much property they own. Obviously the intention behind this practice has been to artificially inflate the value of property and prevent a complete collapse.
More on Repossessed Property in Spain reaches epic proportions
At the end of 2006 there were about 100,000 bank-owned properties for sale in the United States. Today, thanks to the ongoing tsunami of new foreclosures there are over 700,000, and that number is climbing.
