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Mary asked, “How many SD foreclosures have there been over the last three years?”

A total of 44,216 trustee sales since January 1, 2007!

In the same time frame there have been 95,499 sales of detached and attached homes on the MLS.

It looks like servicers are coasting into the HAFA/short-sale era, which officially begins April 5th. Here are the foreclosure stats from the last 12 weeks:

My guess?  The HAFA package will encourage borrowers to pick a lane – either loan modification or short-sale.  But there are probably enough strategic defaulters to keep it busy down at the court house steps, but so far there have been very few quality properties at attractive opening bids.  I’m checking the list everyday, and I haven’t gone down to the ’steps once this year!

Kelly at the Voice of SD reviews the current market conditions in the San Diego real estate market at this link, here’s an excerpt:

There were 9,243 active homes and condos for sale on the Multiple Listing Service on Tuesday, according to Klinge. That number pales next to the number of distressed properties that have yet to be repossessed: 7,260 homes that have received at least one default notice and 10,221 that are headed for auction, according to Klinge. None of those nearly 17,500 properties have gone back to the bank yet.

But the threat of a flood of distressed properties hitting the market and driving prices down in one fell swoop has been just that — a threat — for years now. Klinge’s been monitoring the homes that hit the courthouse steps, and nearly as many auctions have been cancelled as have actually gone forward.

Here is Rich Toscano’s take on it, link here.

Bottom line?  We’ve been knocking on a lot of doors, and it appears that the servicers are keeping the loan modders on the foreclosure rolls for now, and cancelling the trustee sale once the borrowers are well into permanent-mod status.

from sddt.com:

Notices of default and trustee deeds fell a combined 22 percent in November from October.

Data from the San Diego County Assessor showed trustee deeds — the last step in the foreclosure process — dipped 17 percent from October to 1,128. Year over year, trustee deeds are down 1 percent.

The number of NODs filed was down nearly 25 percent to 2,182 last month.

Despite the month-to-month drop, November nearly doubled the number of NODs filed in the same month last year when there was a foreclosure moratorium in place from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The month-to-month dips can be attributed to some seasonal declines. On average, over the past five years, foreclosure filings have fallen 10 percent from October to November.

Year to date, there have been 4,189 fewer trustee’s deeds filed this year than 2008.

Read the rest of this entry »

Nov. 12 (Bloomberg) — U.S. foreclosure filings surpassed 300,000 for an eighth straight month as unemployment made it tougher for homeowners to pay their bills, RealtyTrac, Inc. said.

A total of 332,292 properties received a default or auction notice or were seized by banks in October, up 19 percent from a year earlier, Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac said today. One in every 385 households received a filing. The tally fell 3 percent from September, the third consecutive monthly decline.

“The foreclosure problem is still with us and will keep prices down,” Stephen Miller, chairman of the economics department at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, said in an interview. “The real issue is we don’t know what inventory banks are holding that they have yet to put on the market.”

Distressed real estate transactions accounted for 30 percent of all home sales in the third quarter as the median price fell 11 percent from a year earlier to $177,900, according to the National Association of Realtors. U.S. unemployment surged to a 26-year high of 10.2 percent in October as payrolls fell by 190,000 workers, the Labor Department said last week.

Housing will reach a bottom by March 2010, with lower- priced properties recovering value more quickly than expensive homes, First American CoreLogic said last month.

“The fundamental forces driving foreclosure activity in this housing downturn — high-risk mortgages, negative equity, and unemployment — continue to loom over any nascent recovery,” James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, said in the statement. “We continue to see foreclosure activity levels that are substantially higher than a year ago in most states.”

California ranked second, with filings for one in every 156 households. Florida was third, at one in 168, RealtyTrac said.  California led in total filings, with 85,420, up 50 percent from a year earlier. Default notices in the most populous state more than doubled and auction notices rose 73 percent, according to RealtyTrac.

Folks have been wondering about what details could be culled from the foreclosure list.  We’ll give the benefit of the doubt and omit those on the NOD list – they might be able to save themselves, or get a loan mod. 

Let’s just look at the 100 SFRs valued between $685,000 and $1,250,000 in Carlsbad, 92009 and 92011 that have received their notice of trustee sale, or have met their fate on the steps of the county court house:

What’s the mix of Defaulted Purchase Loans vs. Refinances?  If you refi’d your way into trouble, and wound up over-encumbered, that’s one thing.  How many people either never saw the downturn coming, or or were hit by a hardship after purchasing?

How Many were Neg-ams?  Tabulated by counting those who must have only made the minimum payment, and whose loan balance increased substantially, as noted on the NOTS.   The cutoff was simple – if the amount on the notice of trustee sale was more than 10%, it was called a neg-am:

Conservative vs. Riskier?  Breakdown of above – How did folks use the neg-am loan as an affordability product?

Skin vs. No Skin in Game?  How many used at least a 10% down payment when they purchased?

What Year was the Mortgage Originated?  How long are people able/willing to endure?

How Quick are Banks Processing?  How many months have gone, or went by since the first notice of trustee sale was recorded?

Auction List/Bank-Owned/3rd Party? 

Trying to Sell?  Five of the REOs just closed, and the other is pending (there are no active REO listings currently). The 3rd parties jump right on it, of the four: two are ACT, one PEND, and one SOLD:

Shadow Inventory? The reverse of above. Once a property gets on the auction list, how much chance is there that they’ll be saved? If not saved, how many properties on the list are heading for market?

The 75 properties will probably roll onto the open market spread over the next 2-4 months, and get plenty of attention. The REOs that have already sold closed for $99,000 over list, $91,000 over list, $20,000 over list, list price, and $10,000 under list price.

Will the short-term market get overwhelmed with REOs and short sales, or just get dripped to death? Either way, I think there will be buyers – it’s just a matter of price!

From sddt:  “Even with NOD numbers virtually flat with 2,880 in October and 2,875 in September, 2009 is on pace to break 2008’s record-breaking 34,069 NODs filed in a single year.  With two more months to go, 2009 has racked up 33,904 NODs and has averaged 3,390 per month.”

According to foreclosureradar.com, about 25% of the trustee sales in October were purchased by third parties on the courthouse steps.

There were 877 REO listings inputted onto the MLS last month.

from sddt.com

There are five cities in San Diego County that experienced an increase in property tax revenues in the fiscal year ending in June 2009 despite the county’s assessed value being down 2.3 percent overall.

Del Mar, Coronado, Solana Beach, Poway and Encinitas are the only five cities in the county that have experienced growth, according to County Assessor David Butler.  “They’re the ones you’d expect — coastal cities and other well-off areas,” he said.

Del Mar and Coronado had the most growth at 5.75 percent and 5.11 percent, respectively.  Solana Beach, Poway and Encinitas all grew by less than 2 percent each.

Unlike much of the county, the five cities have had relatively stable home values and few foreclosures.

Additionally, their city governments have not had the same sort of financial issues seen in other cities within the county.

As the city of San Diego faces a deficit of $179 million, some of these cities have been able to produce a surplus, even if it is small.

In Poway, the 2008-09 budget ended with a $320,000 surplus, which Poway City Manager Rod Gould said was due to making cuts with “a scalpel rather than a meat cleaver.”

He said citizens would not likely notice most of the cost-saving strategies the city employed, though they may see slightly lower park maintenance or have to wait a little longer at the permit counter.

“The reason we’re doing a little better than most (other cities in the county) is because we saw this coming three years ago,” he said.

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Our friend Kingside contributes this data received while attending a recent Butler speech:

# of NODs/# of NOTSs/Prop Tax Reviews/Total County Assessed Values/% chg/Total Supplemental Taxes

* in billions

The changes in assessed values (shown in supplemental taxes) must be particularly volatile these days. Properties sold at peak are having their assessed values reduced 20% to 50%, while at the same time the sales of long-time-owned properties are causing increases in similar amounts.

Hat tip to Tom for sending this along.

Sean at foreclosureradar.com has published his latest report:

https://s3.amazonaws.com/CA_Foreclosure_Report/September+2009+CA+Foreclosure+Report.pdf

Excerpts:

With 90,365 properties in inventory, banks currently carry about 4.77 months of supply, however, it takes the banks on average 7.33 months to dispose of a bank owned home, thus current inventory is less than should be expected from normal operations given current foreclosure volumes. Bottom line – there is no “shadow” inventory of bank owned homes being intentionally withheld from the market.

The number of properties on the brink of foreclosure continues to increase and has more than doubled from a year ago. With a smaller percentage of scheduled foreclosures actually being sold due to postponements at trustee sale, while at the same time seeing strong sales of bank owned (REO) properties, banks have managed to reduce their inventory by 41.8 percent from a year earlier. With the banks reselling an average of 18,943 homes a month in the 3rd quarter, and an average time to resell of 7 months (given the time taken for eviction, repairs and resale), we believe there is essentially NO shadow inventory of bank owned homes at this time. Moving forward there are more loans which are delinquent, in default, and scheduled for trustee sale than ever before, which would typically lead to a significant rise in foreclosure sales. We do not believe this increase is likely in the near future given the continued political pressure on banks not to foreclose.

Foreclosures continue to be sold at trustee sale at considerable discount to both the outstanding loan balance and the current estimated fair market value. As we saw in foreclosure outcomes, the lure of an average 20.5 percent discount to fair market value has dramatically increased the number of properties sold to 3rd party investors. At the same time it is very clear why more properties aren’t purchased at auction – with banks pricing the properties they end up taking back as REO an average 23 percent more than the current market value.

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Here the weekly totals of new SD REO listings coming on the MLS – no real increases:

Of those 1,116 REO listings, 717 have already been marked contingent, pending, or sold (64%). The drip system is working great for the lenders!

In the same time frame there have been 4,753 non-REO listings inputted, and 1,850 of those are contingent, pending, or sold (39%).

REO listings make up 19% of the total new listings, but 28% of the contingents, pendings, and solds.

From sddt.com

The number of notices of default and trustee deeds filed in San Diego County in September fell for the third consecutive month. 

The county assessor recorded a 4-percent drop in notices of default (NODs) from August.  The 2,795 NODs filed were the fewest in a single month since November 2008. However, the figure is still more than double the total filed in September 2008.

The number of trustee deeds was down more significantly with a 15-percent month-to-month decline. While 1,156 trustee deeds is a high one-month total from a historical standpoint, it is 41 percent lower than the number recorded in September 2008.

(The MLS is showing 2,690 closings at $232/sf last month for all residential properties.  In September, 2008 there were 3,004 closings, at $248/sf.)