Today we begin an in-depth look at the impact of housing foreclosures in Manatee. Herald reporters have examined thousands of documents to find how the fallout has affected our economy and infrastructure.
Thomas Wilson strolls through his Stoneybrook at Heritage Harbour neighborhood, pointing out the subtle signs of financial fallout.
Windows with views of empty rooms. Weeds sprouting through once well-manicured lawns. Small, bright orange stickers on front doors, the tell-tale sign that the houses have been abandoned.
They are increasingly familiar sights to Wilson, whose upscale neighborhood was among the hardest-hit in a record year for foreclosures.
Lenders filed 2,528 suits seeking to foreclose on mortgages they held on more than 2,400 different Manatee County homes last year, according to a Bradenton Herald analysis of court filings. The numbers are different because some properties had second or third mortgages that lenders also sought to foreclose.
Of those homes, 33 were in the Stoneybrook neighborhood. Just on Wilson's street, Stone Harbour Loop, 16 foreclosure actions were filed last year - one out of every 11 houses.
In the first three months of 2008, seven more were filed, increasing the ratio to one in every eight houses.
Wilson's home also is in jeopardy.
The 43-year-old Chicago native, who moved to Florida eight years ago, has found himself fighting to save his property. He's angered by the aggressive lending and poor oversight that have landed thousands of families in the same predicament.
"It's just terrible what they're doing to people here," Wilson says. "They're killing America and they don't even know what they're doing."
After surging property values peaked in 2006, homeowners in Florida saw their equity plunge. Many who used no-money-down and adjustable-rate financing to buy their home found themselves upside down, owing far more on their home than it was worth.
More than 245,000 of the nation's 1.3 million foreclosure filings last year were in Florida, second only to California, according to Foreclosures.com.
That flood has touched every corner of Manatee's housing market, from beachfront condos on Longboat Key to mobile homes in Myakka City.
The situation continues to worsen throughout the nation.
National home prices have already dropped 15 percent since their peak in 2006. And Yale University economist Robert Shiller, pioneer of the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home-price index, has predicted that national housing prices likely will plummet below the 30 percent drop encountered during the Great Depression.
In Manatee County, Palmetto and the central part of Bradenton had the most suits, as well as the most foreclosures in 2007. But there also were high concentrations in newer subdivisions in East Manatee, Ellenton and Parrish.
The neighborhoods with the highest numbers of foreclosure filings in 2007 were Bayshore Gardens, Covered Bridge Estates, River Plantation, Summerfield Village and Stoneybrook. Those neighborhoods accounted for one out of every 14 foreclosure actions filed in the courts, the Herald's analysis found.
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