(Where are International Buyers Coming From & What are they Paying? A Recent Poll, Stated Above, Shows the Countries They’re Coming From, and How Much they are Paying..)
ORLANDO, Fla. – March 10, 2009 – Real-estate agent Bryant Tutas says he gets 20 to 30 e-mails a day from United Kingdom investors who tell him essentially the same thing: “I want to buy a house. I want to buy a house today. I’ve got cash.”

“International investors are coming out of the woodwork,” said Tutas, who specializes in foreclosure sales in Kissimmee, Central Florida’s hardest-hit area for mortgage defaults. Although many low-ball overseas offers to real-estate agents and banks are rejected, the number of home sales in Osceola County was up 120 percent in January from a year earlier.

Bargain-hunting Brits are just one example of how the market is responding to the foreclosure crisis in Central Florida, where 45,000 homes are in some stage of foreclosure. An Orlando Sentinel analysis of mortgage-default records provided by RealtyTrac found that the number of homes in foreclosure has tripled in the past year and that the most heavily impacted areas continue to be Kissimmee and Deltona. The Kissimmee area has four of the 10 Central Florida ZIP codes where the number of foreclosures grew the most. Deltona has two.

The patterns in Central Florida mirror those found across the state, said University of Florida professor Wayne Archer, executive director of the Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies. The areas most affected seem to be more affordable communities farther from big employers. Many buyers were caught there, Archer said. “They made commitments at the top of the curve, and it’s tough.”

As the foreclosure crisis evolves, investors are looking for steals on foreclosed homes. Some homeowners are struggling to hold on. Others have stopped making payments and are awaiting eviction.

‘What can I steal?’

In Deltona, foreclosure specialists are peddling sheer affordability. Homes that fetched $300,000 two years ago now go for less than half that price.

“I have buyers saying, ‘What can I steal?’ I have buyers wanting 35 cents on the dollar,” said Concord Real Estate broker Janet Fetterman, whose company is handling about 150 Volusia County homes in some stage of foreclosure, which can begin once a homeowner has missed three consecutive monthly payments. Plenty remain vacant, she noted, because offers are simply too low.

Homeowners east of Orlando have turned to college students for help.

“I see a lot of students who are taking advantage of these houses that are vacant,” said Jimmy Watson, the University of Central Florida’s director of off-campus student services. “I’m not sure it’s foreclosures, but I’d suggest that’s what it is. I am really surprised to go out in these communities and see how many students are in these homes. They are nice homes. You’d be surprised they would be rented to students.”

Colonial High School teacher Marc Jarett said he sold his condo at the peak of the market in 2006 and used the proceeds to buy a six-bedroom house near the Avalon community in east Orange County. The idea was to live there and rent rooms to UCF students. He paid $373,000 for the place, which he said has since dropped $100,000 in value, and payments would go up in four years presuming the interest rates increase on his adjustable-rate mortgage. For now, he covers expenses with rental income.

“It’s the only way I’d be able to keep the house,” said Jarett, whose street had 16 foreclosures last year – up from three the year before. “They pay my mortgage plus the insurance and utilities.”

Not all of those facing foreclosure are ready or able to rent their homes. Some are simply awaiting eviction.

Community activists late last month pledged to form a wall around the east Orange County home of Inez and Pedro Batista, who expected to be evicted because of foreclosure as soon as March19. The volunteers were from ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which has focused on Orlando as part of a national campaign to push for foreclosure relief.

‘My neighbors just left’

Inez Batista said her husband worked in the construction industry. But when work dried up in the past two years because of the real-estate bust, they were unable to make their payments. The realities of foreclosure are everywhere, she said.

“I see it every day,” said Batista, who now works for Wells Fargo bank. “I see people trying to get their loan modifications. My neighbors just left, too.”

South of Kissimmee, in one of Central Florida’s worst areas for foreclosures, the Dilone family faces the loss of its home because of not being able to keep up with the rising payments on an adjustable-rate mortgage.

Former Boston resident Elsa Dilone said she visited Walt Disney World with her family in 2005 and fell in love with the area. The family quickly bought a 3,400-square-foot home south of Kissimmee for $351,300. The mother of three was so thrilled that she decorated the entry hall with a $4,000 chandelier festooned with gold and crystal prisms to illuminate the tiled entry and resort-style furnishing in the adjoining living room.

Now when she enters her otherwise-spotless home, she is greeted by cardboard boxes packed with her belongings and a 6-inch black hole where the chandelier was mounted. She said the family didn’t anticipate that the adjustable-rate payments would spike from $1,100 to $3,800, which is more than her carpenter husband earns in a month. The family has not made a mortgage payment in seven months, and she expects to be evicted at any moment.

“Every time I open the door and see the boxes there, I know my time is coming,” said Dilone, adding that she hoped they can find a nearby rental. Values throughout the area have plummeted, and the same-model house now sells for $180,000 – about half what the family paid. About one in four houses on her street of 28 homes has been in foreclosure in the past two years, according to RealtyTrac.

As for the chandelier, which was 6-feet tall and 4-feet wide, she sold it for $1,000 to a friend – who so far has been unable to pay for it.

Copyright © 2009 The Orlando Sentinel, Fla., Mary Shanklin. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.