I am glad,wife came w/her childhood home..
Great package deal
Redeyes.... your one lucky dude..... :wink:
June Foreclosure Report, its a bit long, but excellent information. :shock: :shock: :shock:
It is that time of the month again folks! The June monthly CA foreclosure report is ready, data courtesy of Foreclosure Radar. It was another ‘record’ month, which when speaking of foreclosures, is not a good thing. However, in a couple of areas we show some ‘leveling-off’.
‘Leveling-off’ is considered to be positive by many but that sometimes is not the case. For example, if retail sales ‘level-off’ going into December, it is not a good thing because sales should accelerate in the Holiday’s. This is analogous to what happened in the foreclosure arena in June. Although numbers seem to be leveling off, the situation is continuing to worsen according to the way I see the data.
One thing is for sure, this report confirms what I have said for months, that the REO market is now ‘the real estate market’ and the banks are the ‘market makers’. For the first time in history, the seller controls the price and not the buyer, which is responsible for pile-driving prices throughout the state and nation. CONTINUED…
For a second straight month, CA lenders took back over $10 billion ($10.2 billion) in properties from the foreclosure auctions throughout the state. Last month banks took back $10.4 billion. If the banks are lucky and sell the properties for 60 cents of the NEW appraised value, which could be as little as 30-40% of the value at the time they initially lent on the property, then this could represent another $6 billion+ in losses for the nations largest lenders in one state for one month. In case you were wondering, CA represents roughly 30% of the total foreclosure count and 45% of the total foreclosure volume of the entire nation.
Just think how many second mortgages were completely wiped out. In bubble states, when a first mortgage is foreclosed upon and there is a second mortgage in place, typically the second mortgage is totally wiped out.
Let’s break it down.
1. Notices of Default (NOD), the first step in the CA foreclosure process when borrowers go down 90-days in payments, were down just 1.5% to 42,151 filings from 43,011 last month. This is also an 88.8% increase from a year ago. These are from people who first began missing payments in Feb and March. But is this small drop a positive? For the reasons listed below, I think the drop should have been much more substantial.
First, in January through early March, there was a mini refi-boom, as rates fell sharply. If not for that, the NOD count could have been much worse. Since then, rates are up sharply and mortgage application volume has been consistently falling. This means more people may be missing payments due to the lack of financing options, which will lead to an increase in NOD’s over the next few months from these already historically high levels.
Second, beginning around January we began seeing a fairly significant decrease and leveling-off in subprime defaults and subsequent increase in Alt-A and Prime defaults. This transition may have caused a temporary decrease in NOD’s. The disturbing part about this is that the Alt-A and Prime universes individually dwarf the subprime universe. If Alt-A and Prime defaults continue to increase at the rate we have seen for the past 4-5 months, once the seasonal effects of the summer selling season subside, that could spell trouble. :cry:
Last but not least, the summer selling season brings ‘hope’ to sellers. Nearly every listing you see lately says ‘potential short sale’. Seasonality factors likely kept NOD’s down a bit, as people kept themselves below the 90-day late threshold for the summer in order to try to sell the home during the busy time of year. Come Sept if this segment’s homes do not sell, NOD’s could spike going into year-end.
I imagine the NOD counts would have been much higher if not for the reasons listed above. These various and unique circumstances have masked the underlying problem and come Sept and the end of the selling season, the market could get hit hard as it did last Sept, which was the beginning of the 30% median home price fall in CA over the past 12-months.
The vast majority of NOD’s are first mortgages because second mortgage holders quit filing NOD’s months ago, due to values falling to levels that make it futile. If you are a second mortgage holder and there is no value in the property, there is no reason to foreclose because the first mortgage holder gets it all. For this reason, second mortgage loan defaults are soaring and the loans are essentially worthless. Borrowers know that lenders have to use more traditional means of collection and are not paying on their second mortgage. A second mortgage lender is usually completely wiped out when a home goes into foreclosure. This problem will not go away.
Roughly 75% of NOD’s make it all the way through the foreclosure auction stage and end up on banks balance sheets. This number is continuing to rise as fewer chose to cure their default due to having no equity in the property. About 25% of NOD’s are cured by various means by the time auction hits. If you combine the past 3 months NOD’s the total is 128.654. At a 25% cure rate, 96,491 homes will be auctioned and most taken back by banks from Oct through Dec, which are historically poor sales months. There is little chance buyers will swarm at this time of year.
2. Notice of Trustee Sale (NTS ) were at an all-time record high of 35,544 new filings from 34,564, representing a 3.6% increase over last months record. This is huge. This means much fewer people are curing their NOD’s than in the past. The June NTS figure is primarily from NOD’s 3-4 months prior, as by law the NTS can be filed 90-days after the NOD. However, due to the back log, the average time it took a lender last month to file the NTS was 105-days. Lenders can take a home to auction 21-days following the NTS.
In February, NOD’s were 37,078 so the percentage that made it from NOD to NTS was 93.22%. This is a new record by a long shot. If you go back a year, many more were able to cure their default by refinancing, borrowing money, selling their home etc. For the record, June 2008 NTS were up 216% over June 2007.
3. Total homes that went to auction actually decreased 4.8% to a total of 24,286 properties. Of these, 23,526 or 96.8% received no bid higher than the lenders opening bid and became lender owned (REO). This number is lower than expected and can be explained by either a) banks delaying foreclosure auctionslonger than the typical 21-35 days, which has been the typical time frame in the past several months b) short-sale approvals taking so long it has stretched out the final leg of the foreclosure process. c) one or more large banks imposing a moratorium on certain foreclosures due to the fact they already own so many and 96.8% come back to them from auction.
This last point is only speculation on my part and it will require more research but we saw Countrywide put off foreclosing in Dec 2007 and Jan 7th was the largest single foreclosure day ever in the state of CA due to Countrywide. I assume they did this to make their Q4 and full-year 2007 look better.
Or, banks have simply reached the maximum they can process and the time it takes to go from NTS to actual foreclosure auction has has become very protracted.
One thing to note that will make bubblevision happy: Sales to 3rd parties at auctions continued to increase, up 9.8 percent from the prior month, and lowering the percent of properties returned to the lender to 96.8%, the lowest it has been since last October. Last month is was 98%. Puh-lease! :roll:
4. Discounts at auction were at a record. 87% of all homes were discounted at an average of 31% at the opening bid. Last month, 80% of all homes were discounted an average of 30%. Nearly 25% were discounted by 50% OR MORE! :cry: Opening bids exceeded 40% in the largest subprime areas such as Sacramento, San Joaquin, Stanislaus and Merced. Remember, most first mortgages were at an original 80% loan-to-value or less so the actual discount from the original sales price or appraised value is much less.
For those of you who live and die by the monthly existing and new home sales report, remember that in most cases, bank REO sales are counted in the existing sales number. Therefore, when you see ‘home sale rising’ be careful to read between the lines. Although ‘total sales’ may have increased last month, so did foreclosure sales, which means ‘organic’ sales actually decreased. As a matter of fact, Data Quick reported that 38% of last month’s total CA existing home sales were from the foreclosures.
With so much new foreclosure inventory entering the system and discounts getting deeper each month, there should continue to be more bank REO sales of existing homes in the future, making it seem as the housing crisis is ‘leveling off’ or improving. This is the primary problem with so many ‘analysts’ positive housing predictions.
But, how can you truly judge sales and inventory numbers when the banks are taking back as many home as they sell each month? Remember, the ‘months supply’ number is calculated using ‘listed’ inventory and a very small percentage of bank REO inventory is listed. The amount of ‘non-listed’ bank REO or, shadow inventory, is staggering. :shock:
What is most frightening is how quickly values are dropping as a result of the shadow inventory. With as much bank REO inventory selling for as deep of discounts as we are seeing, it is forcing an immediate and swift mark-to-market change in values of entire neighborhoods all over the state. We have never seen a real estate market in which one seller (banks) controls so much inventory and has the ability to sell it for whatever it takes to move it quickly. :shock:
If a few of these REO homes sell at 20%-30% below the most recent comparable sales within a mile radius of your home, your value will be negatively impacted. Very quickly, America’s real estate is being marked-to-market by the bank’s shadow inventory, accelerating a natural process that should take years. This causes even greater numbers of home owners to go into a negative equity position, causing even more loan defaults. It is a vicious cycle that has never been seen before.
