Tom Ross/staff

02-04-2012

Among the 62 foreclosed homes actively listed on the local real estate market, 39 are offered by the federally sponsored mortgage packagers Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The list changes weekly, and the two entities often price the homes at some of the steepest discounts in the market. But not every time.

Freddie Mac, formally the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp., has a three-bedroom townhome in the family-oriented River Place neighborhood on the city’s south side listed for $340,000. That’s 12 percent lower than the April 2007 selling price of $385,000, when the local market was at its peak.

River Place has a paved link to the Yampa River Core Trail, an indoor community gathering space, young families with children and a convenience store and restaurant are within walking distance.

Fannie Mae, formally called the Federal National Mortgage Association, sold a pair of properties in the past two weeks at drastically reduced prices.

A prime example is the 3,516-square-foot, single-family home built in 1999 on a 0.23-acre lot in Heritage Park. Fannie Mae sold it for $319,000 on Jan. 30. The home has five bedrooms and 3.5 bathrooms.

The selling price was the equivalent of $90.70 per square foot — obviously less than replacement cost.

More recently, on Wednesday, Fannie sold a two-bedroom condominium in Spring Meadows, on Walton Creek Road just steps from the free-to-rider bus to the ski area, for $111,000. That’s less than half of the $235,000 it sold for in 2007.

Freddie realized a strong sale price on Jan. 11 for a 1970s-era slopeside condominium in Storm Meadows Club. The 558-square-foot, one-bedroom, one-bath vacation condo sold for $189,000 in 2006 and for $147,000 on Jan. 11 — equal to 78 percent of its sale price near the peak of the market.

Many of the Routt County properties owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not listed with a local Realtor, but with an agent working in Fort Collins.

Fannie and Freddie are sponsored by the federal government but do not lend money for home purchases. Instead, they act to ensure the availability of money for home loans through their willingness to purchase and sometimes securitize loans extended by banks and credit unions.

In the wake of the burst of the housing bubble, Fannie and Freddie have come under fire for policies with their roots in the first half of the 1990s that encouraged the two organizations to make more money for affordable home purchasers. Critics say those policies led to subprime lending and the extension of mortgages to people who really should have been in the rental market.

Single-family homes situated within the city limits of Steamboat Springs are notably absent from the list of homes owned by Fannie and Freddie. And most of the properties listed by Fannie and Freddie here are at the low end of the price spectrum.

Since 2006, the maximum loan amount for a mortgage backed by Fannie has been $417,000. But since 2008 and the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, Routt County has been among a number of high-cost areas in the country where the Fannie’s limits of nonconforming loans have been bumped to $625,500.

There are 12 condominiums near Steamboat Ski Area on the list of properties here owned by Fannie and Freddie — including several in the Shadow Run and Walton Village neighborhoods near the intersection of Walton Creek and Whistler roads. However, much of that inventory was absorbed in 2011.

Eight townhomes in the Stagecoach area are on the list. Another four homes are in Hayden. The rest of the list is distributed in ones and twos among Oak Creek, Yampa, West Steamboat and North Routt.