Santa Barbara County May REO's

Foreclosures are certainly a reality in today's real estate market. Santa Barbara County has experienced the affects of properties being taken back by lenders now for quite some time.

In May there were 162 properties that were taken back. The South County had 17 properties that found their way back to the bank in May. 14 of them were residences with 4 being condominiums and 2 being multi family properties. The final property was an Industrial property on Carpinteria Ave. that had a loan amount of over 7 million dollars. The Santa Barbara Housing Bubble Blog gives some of the hole by hole goings on with that property.

The 17 properties spanning Goleta, Santa Barbara, Carpinteria, & Summerland is more than double the number from April. This is really unusual for the South Coast. Having this many properties being bank owned is historically significant. I would expect there to continue to be a number of foreclosures. I don't expect the number to rise much if any. Buyers appear to be picking up on these properties being priced right.

This leaves 146 properties in Northern Santa Barbara County. Once again Santa Maria is the hardest hit. 101 was the grand total for that area. All of these properties were residential. 1 was a multi family property, 13 were condominiums, and 87 single family residences. The list of lenders looks like a who's who's from the latest front pages of the business sections of any major newspaper.

Lompoc needs to be referenced in this article as they have had many of the same issues as Santa Maria. There were 34 properties in Lompoc. They were all residential with 7 being condos, 1 being a multi family, and the rest being single family.

Lastly, the Santa Ynez Valley had a few foreclosures, not really enough to mention. They all appeared to be single family residences.

Of course this information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed. For more details on individual properties as well as a visual on where these properties are located you can click on and use the map below.