NY Times agrees, Baltimore housing market doomed...

OK, I just picked that title to annoy T. But the NY Times does have an article about increased
foreclosures in Baltimore.

The article talks about the glut of unsold condos, increased foreclosures (often due to nontraditional mortgages, some which didn't require escrow), and slower sales and longer days on market.

Granted, the article focused on the city, so I can feel better about my townhouse in Baltimore County. And there is probably some truth to that - city real estate tends to be more volatile than suburban real estate. Neighborhoods tend to fall in and out of favor more in the city than in the county. And buyers in the city are often less financially stable than county buyers, and thus more likely to get alternative mortgages. There were also a lot more rehabs in the city, which added to the volatility - and meant that a lot people bought houses, tried to flip them for a profit, and failed - for all the reasons you see on TLC and Discovery channel programs, like the wrong neighborhoods or cost overruns.

One thing I find kind of interesting about the NYTimes article wasn't the article - it was the picture. Though there isn't much mention of Hampden in the article, the picture is of Hampden, which is actually one of Baltimore's better neighborhoods - it's a working-class community that's become kind of trendy/artsy in the last decade or so as trendy people moved there because it was cheap, but not as scary as some of the other neighborhoods and near some nicer areas, like Roland Park and Guilford, where Baltimore's richest live - and also close to a number of colleges. There are considerably fewer boarded-up houses in Hampden than many other Baltimore neighborhoods, but they still managed to find one to take the picture of. (I think the picture might be Falls Road, which has very few vacants).