Monday, July 27, 2009

Foreclosures! The Next Big Wave, When?

I have been doing my best to track the foreclosures in Santa Barbara County now for a few years and so far I'm not seeing this next big wave everyone seems to be mentioning.

Businessweek published an article that said they could hit this summer.

L A Times also had a recent article about the impending wave.

Maybe I need to be more patient and let this play out. There is another interesting article by the New York Times with a little different slant on things.

They mention that banks are not wanting to foreclose on properties these days for one big reason. Many lenders have a troubled balance sheet and to take possession of more foreclosed properties only makes the books worse.

The article makes it sound as though more lenders are willing to try and work something out with the troubled borrower than they would be before all these foreclosures happened.

So what does that mean to us in Santa Barbara County? Last year around this time we had just seen the highest number of Notices of Defaults, Notices of Trustees Sales, and Trustees Deeds recorded in the history of Santa Barbara County.

This year we have seen the number of Notices of Default hit an all time high in March. A curious thing has been happening though. The number of Notices of Trustees Sale, and Trustees Deeds are down significantly from last year. Could the New York Times article be right?

One other explanation is that the lenders are just not processing these properties as fast as they should in an effort to keep the books looking as healthy as possible.

Do I still need to be more patient or is it possible that some of the lenders are working harder to keep people in their properties? Time will tell.

I would love to hear what you are experiencing.

2 comments:

CoachingByPeter said...

Learning about real estate also involves knowing what areas are going for and being able to calculate what a property is worth. This comes from years of knowledge and you can add this valuable tool to your arsenal by doing research. You should try to view as many properties as you can and start learning how to judge there worth.

Unknown said...

People started realizing that
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