Williamson Commercial Foreclosures Rise Significantly

Commercial foreclosures of properties have risen by 139% within this year in counties of Williamson and Travis, a much higher increase compared to that of foreclosure homes, as stated within a report that was released last Tuesday.

All in all, more than five hundred properties have been posted, much higher than the two hundred properties posted from January to July of 2008, as stated within the Foreclosure Listing Service Incorporated, which as a firm of Addison specializing in tracking such numbers. There happened to be more than four hundred commercial foreclosures all in all in the year of 2008, higher by around sixty percent than the year before that. These properties included apartments, industrial and retail buildings, offices and unimproved commercial lands.

One exception among these increases would be postings of office buildings, which have gone down by almost forty percent during the initial seven months within this year of 2009. As a comparison, residential foreclosures have gone up by almost forty percent at the same exact period, as stated by the president of the same service mentioned above. This spike within commercial foreclosures truly is not too surprising in today’s existing economic and financial environment, states an economist of the Dallas Bank of Federal Reserve.

In the year 2008, as the overall financial situation got worse, investment activities of commercial real estate fell significantly while credit became far more difficult to get. Such conditions, however, stayed quite soft within this year of 2009 while lenders stayed wary regarding to the addition of commercial properties of real estate within their books.

Additionally, the Texas economic downturn has lowered the overall demand for the majority of kinds of commercial space of real estate, most of all retail, and the demise of several retailers has left these properties empty without any tenants. A total of around eight percent of the counties of Williamson and Travis go to commercial postings within this year of 2009. However, it is expected that such commercial foreclosures will continue to rise within this year.

With the spending on retail way down, as well as an increasing amount of retailers finally closing down their doors, it doesn’t seem to be surprising that the second-biggest gain within commercial postings in the counties of Williamson and Travis are for retail properties.

But the commercial markets of real estate in Texas happen to be much healthier as they lead into the economic downturn compared to previous recessions, and this may benefit the overall state while economic conditions keep improving. The decline within postings in the office market of Austin is in high contrast with that of Dallas-Fort Worth, where the largest commercial postings gain of 109% was among office buildings.

The majority of these filings, though, were for older and smaller buildings, a trend which can be seen al over the state, including the area of Austin. This pattern marks a huge difference between foreclosures that are currently being compared with the ones during the crash of real estate within the late 1980s, when important numbers of properties became foreclosed in the area of Texas.

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