When Picket Report was named one of Detroit’s best tech startups of 2011, questions lingered as to whether its data-driven model for helping homebuyers find their “perfect neighborhood” could lead to homogenized communities. The launch of their online search tool this week proved that homogenization wasn’t the only cause for concern, however. Racial and ethnic stereotyping are, too.

Creators of the website, which is backed by Quicken Loans, the largest online mortgage lender in the country, described their comprehensive service as a “Carfax report for the house,” an aggregation of more than 100 million pieces of data, that they say dig deep into the everyday lives of the people who could potentially be your neighbors. “It’s stuff like people watch HGTV because they like doing their own home improvements, they like the idea of driving a Ford car but most likely drive a used Ford,” co-founder Bryan Kunka told The Huffington Post last year.

With fair housing laws preventing real estate agents from telling you exactly who lives in the neighborhood, Picket Report essentially provides that information for you. But screenshots taken Thursday by real-estate website Curbed revealed some rather stereotypical categorizations.

A search in Detroit’s 48208 zip code, for example, yielded neighborhood breakdowns that described residents as “Struggling Societies,” an “economically challenged mix of singles, divorced and widowed individuals in smaller cities and urban areas looking to make ends meet.” Another group, called the “Soul Survivors,” was said to consist of “older, down-scale African-American singles and single parents established in modest urban homes.” And another, the “Ciudad Strivers,” was described as “mid-scale, Hispanic families and single parents in gateway communities.”

More affluent neighbors included “Asian Achievers,” whose were said to be “enjoying dynamic lifestyles in metro areas;” and “Silver Sophisticates, mature, upscale couples and singles in suburban homes.”

Incidentally, Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, who reportedly helped hatch the idea for Picket Report, has been credited as the third-largest landlord in Detroit, behind the city and General Motors, controlling more than 1.6 million square feet of real estate.

Following the backlash it received from Curbed and other media, Picket Report removed the lifestyle content from its site and co-founder Brian Bandemer issued the following statement in an email to the Huffington Post.

Earlier today, we were made aware of some offensive and unacceptable content on Picketreport.com. Our website aggregates content created by third party vendors. In this case, we did not carefully review the neighborhood descriptions, which are provided by a vendor, prior to the launch of our site yesterday. As soon as we became aware of the content, we removed it.

This is a tremendously embarrassing and humbling experience for our young company, and one we regret more than we can explain. We promise to find a new and better way to share community information in a way that is informative and not offensive.

We apologize profusely for this experience and anyone we may have offended.

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Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/26/picket-report-homebuying-search-tool-racial-stereotypes_n_1457456.html

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Brooklyn Shelters Homeowners With Longest U.S. Foreclosure Time

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Brooklyn residents watch community activists and Occupy Wall Street movement members march to draw attention to foreclosed homes.

Brooklyn residents watch community activists and Occupy Wall Street movement members march to draw attention to foreclosed homes. Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

New York’s Kings County, also known
as Brooklyn, wears the crown as the U.S. community where it
takes longest to foreclose on a delinquent homeowner.

Lenders took an average of 1,187 days — more than three
years — to repossess a home in Kings County during the last
three months of 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The protracted process led to just 32 fourth-quarter foreclosure
completions in a borough where more than 27,000 homes got
delinquency notices last year, New York Department of Financial
Services data show.

The 10 U.S. counties with the longest foreclosure timelines
were all in New York and New Jersey. While delays give some
struggling homeowners time to renegotiate loan terms and limit
supply on the market, they eventually depress housing values by
postponing the inevitable for borrowers who can’t pay their
mortgages or maintain their properties, said Jonathan Miller,
president of New York appraiser Miller Samuel Inc.

“You aren’t doing anybody any favors in the long run,” he
said in a telephone interview. “In markets where it takes
longer for the foreclosure process, it takes longer to
recover.”

New York and New Jersey are two of the 26 states that
require judicial review before lenders can seize a property. New
York’s Nassau, Bronx and Suffolk counties followed Brooklyn,
with Queens ranking No. 8, according to a Bloomberg Rankings
analysis of the data from RealtyTrac Inc., a real estate
information service based in Irvine, California. New Jersey’s
Essex, Somerset, Passaic, Hudson and Mercer counties filled out
the top 10.

Foreclosure Time Triples

For the top eight counties, foreclosures averaged more than
1,000 days after a default filing, also known as a lis pendens,
was recorded with the courts against a borrower, according to
the data. In the quarter ended March 31, the average U.S.
foreclosure took 370 days, triple the amount of time in 2007,
according to RealtyTrac. Fourth-quarter data is the latest
available for individual counties.

The New York statewide average to repossess a home was
1,056 days in the first quarter, while New Jersey averaged 966
days, according to an April 12 report by RealtyTrac.

Texas, where court approval isn’t required, has the
shortest foreclosure timeline. During the first quarter, banks
seized homes an average of 87 days after the first foreclosure
notice was filed. In Guadalupe County, Texas, banks repossessed
49 homes in the fourth quarter, seizing them an average of 46.6
days after the filing of the first notice, the fastest pace of
any U.S. county, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Northern New Jersey

Court foreclosure filings in the New York metropolitan
area, which includes northern New Jersey and Long Island, fell
41 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, RealtyTrac
reported yesterday. One in 981 New York metro area homes
received a filing, such as a notice of default or sale at
auction, compared with the U.S. average of one in 230. Stockton,
California, had the highest filing rate of any metro area, at
one in 60 homes.

New York state’s time to foreclose has quadrupled since
2007. A 2009 state law required court-refereed settlement
conferences for homeowners to negotiate payment modifications,
which usually take six to eight meetings over 12 to 16 months,
said Meghan Faux, director of the foreclosure prevention project
at South Brooklyn Legal Services.

Loan servicers often drag out the process by misplacing
paperwork and refusing to offer affordable mortgage
modifications, driving homeowners deeper into debt, she said.

“They’re not negotiating in good faith,” Faux said in a
telephone interview. “Delays aren’t good for most homeowners.”

Making Home Affordable

Homeowners in the greater New York City area have received
49,949 payment plan modifications as of February under the U.S.
Making Home Affordable program, making it second only to the Los
Angeles area, according to an April 6 report by the Treasury
Department.

Bank of America Corp., which has the most housing-related
writedowns of any U.S. bank, strives to “provide our customers
timely and accurate decisions so they can move forward with
their lives,” Sheila Sellers, senior vice president for
lender’s National Mortgage Outreach program, testified at a
March 19 Congressional hearing on mortgage servicing and
foreclosures that was held in Brooklyn.

“Our goal will be to help them stay in their home whenever
possible,” she said. “Where that is not possible, we will
explore all other options available to help them avoid
foreclosure.”

Short Sales

Bank of America has agreed to sell more homes for a loss
through short sales than any U.S. lender, according to
RealtyTrac. In March, the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank
announced a pilot program to enable 1,000 delinquent borrowers
to stay in their homes as renters after it reclaims the title.
Bank of America will start the program in Nevada, Arizona and
New York, states with the first, third and 46th highest rates of
foreclosure filings, respectively, according to RealtyTrac.

“New York is the judicial state and the other two are non-
judicial,” Rick Simon, a spokesman for Bank of America, said in
a telephone interview from his office in Calabasas, California.
“We wanted to try it in diverse areas.”

Homeowners in Brooklyn last year received 27,311 pre-
foreclosure delinquency notices, which alerted borrowers their
lender plans to file a lis pendens after 90 days, according to
an analysis by the Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy
Project, a Manhattan-based advocacy group. Those notices
outnumbered eventual default filings 14 to 1, according to the
study.

Judge’s Ruling

The number of court filings dropped after an October 2010
ruling by New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman required
bank lawyers to affirm they have documents to prove their right
to seize a house, said Alexis Iwanisziw, a researcher at the
advocacy group.

“The decline in foreclosure filings is largely
attributable to banks’ inability to produce documentation
required to initiate foreclosure cases, as New York courts
heighten their scrutiny of banks’ foreclosure filings,”
Iwanisziw and her colleague Sarah Ludwig wrote in a January
report on New York City foreclosures.

Almost two-thirds of the 2,201 Brooklyn homes affected by
foreclosure filings in the fourth quarter were investor-owned,
not owner-occupied, according to estimates in a March 28 report
by the Furman Center for Real Estate Urban Policy at New York
University.

“There are definitely downsides to the delays,” Josiah
Madar, a research fellow at the Furman Center, said in a
telephone interview. “Any blight the property is causing is
likely to continue.”

Brooklyn Home Prices

Brooklyn’s median home price fell to $450,000 in the first
quarter, down 5.3 percent from a year earlier, Miller Samuel
reported on April 19. By contrast, prices in cities such as
Miami (SPCSMIA) and Phoenix, where the inventory of foreclosed homes has
shrunk, have begun to recover. Miami’s median price was $141,300
in the first quarter, up 1.1 percent from a year earlier, while
the median price in Phoenix rose 2.8 percent, according to an
April 25 report by Zillow Inc. (Z)

The Phoenix metropolitan area had the ninth-highest
foreclosure rate, Miami ranked 13th and New York was 181st in
the three months ended March 31, according to RealtyTrac.

“Most of the efforts that have been done on the state and
local level have actually extended the crisis,” said Miller of
appraiser Miller Samuel. “In New York, you can have someone who
stops paying their mortgage for three years. How does that help
the housing market recover? It doesn’t.”

To contact the reporter on this story:
John Gittelsohn in Los Angeles at
johngitt@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Kara Wetzel at
kwetzel@bloomberg.net

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Article source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-27/brooklyn-shelters-homeowners-with-longest-foreclosures.html