Foreclosure Watch: 46 Bowman Drive

This property was forclosed upon in January 2009. The outstanding mortgage then was $688,000. The purchasor and current owner paid Washington Mutual Bank $860,000 for the property in February.

This history is indicative of what is happening throughout town though not captured in the GMLS database, by many agents or the local newspaper. As a sidebar kudos to Zillow and other sites that manage to capture this data and make it publicly available (I, on the other hand, rummaged through Town Hall records to find it). For a property buyer or seller this type of data is relevant for determing market value and useful for establishing list or offer pricing. I expect that a property appraiser would look at these distressed sales comps in determing an appraisal value to support Bank financing, so I figure a real estate agent should also.

This 4bedroom, 3 bath, 3,266sqft modified Cape was listed for $1.295mln in April '04 and went to contract less than a month later. The sale closed in July 2004 for $1.280 (see house as it was in 2004 to the left).

After upgrades which included a new septic, driveway, hardwood floors, Kitchen countertop and appliances, and new baths, according to the list sheet, the property was relisted in July 2007 for $2.475mln. The listing expired in October 2008 asking $1.495mln.

The party that purchased the property in 2004 secured a Pay-Option-ARM to finance the purchase. The loan principal was $1.15mln or 90% of purchase price. In this type of mortgage the borrow could roll the interest payment into the loan principal up to a cap, which in this case was 115% of the original principal or $1,322,500 before they had to start paying. The same party secured a Personal Line of Credit for $150,000. So no wonder the borrower didn't want to sell for less than $1,472,500 (the total of the Maximum principal plus the line of credit).