April's Foreclosure Numbers For Santa Barbara County

Here it is May Day and the numbers are in. I'm not sure how the county gets them posted on their site so quickly but all the numbers of Notices of Defaults, Notice of Trustee Sales, and Trustees Deeds are complete for April.

The good news is each of those numbers went down from March. The Notices of Defaults went down from looks to be an all time high of 414 to 298. That is a significant drop and would appear to be more of a number you would expect. The 414 number would appear to be elevated because of the moratorium that had been put on recording Notices of Defaults.

Notices of Trustee Sales dropped from 203 to 189. Again the number went down and is far from the high of July of last year which was 305. The rest of the year will be interesting to see how this number goes. I certainly am hoping that all the new programs that are in place will keep people in their homes.

The number of Trustees Deeds that were recorded in April were down as well. April had 74 which is very low and hasn't been lower since July of 2007. That is really good news. It means less banks are taking back property. I wish I could explain what exactly is happening. I would welcome any insight in to this situation.

The bad news of course is that foreclosures and the process of foreclosures hasn't really stopped. There are still a significant amount of properties in one phase of foreclosure or another. I do believe there are some signs of them slowing up and hope that I am right.

I do know that many of the foreclosures are selling in the Santa Maria and Lompoc areas.

Santa Barbara County Foreclosure Trends

In reviewing the statistics on the foreclosure chart. You can see that having some historical data is a good thing.

The number of Notice of Defaults that have recorded the last few months are hanging around the 250 to 280 ish mark. I think this is probably where Santa Barbara County is going to be for a while.

I say this because I can see that the numbers of loans adjusting is going to continue to rise through August which is the latest month I have.

August's number is 222, which is the exact same number of loans that were scheduled to adjust in the county in November. November was the highest month on the chart to date. It will be interesting to see if that number goes any higher this year. I suspect it could.

The number of Trustees Deeds peaked in January and so did the number of Notice of Defaults. It is good to see a correlation between those 2 numbers.

The number of REO sales hit an all time high in March of 25, one more than we saw in February. I would expect these numbers to be consistently at this level or higher for the coming month. This is a particularly good sign, because that means the lenders are getting these properties off of their books.

From what I'm hearing it sounds like the lenders who are taking these properties back are doing what they can to move these properties quickly, and our markets seemed to have adjusted to it.

You may notice on the chart that the number of REO's and Trustees Deeds are converging. This is also good, because the number of properties being sold to end consumers and the number of properties that banks are taking back are coming closer together.

In other words the number of bank owned properties on the market will be less of an influence since they are moving about as soon as they come on. The faster this inventory turns over the better and closer we are to having a market less influenced by these foreclosed properties.

See You In Escrow

Santa Barbara Foreclosure Trends

I know this is going to come off as some kind of understatement, but I'll write it anyway. "This is a very interesting Real Estate Market!"

Updating the numbers for the Foreclosures Trends is just like updating any of the other numbers I look at each month, Crazy!

If you remember when I first started this chart it was a little void of much historical data for the number of loans that are adjusting here in Santa Barbara County. As you can see we are starting to see a trend there.

The number is down to 41 in February. I can tell you the number will go up to the 180 mark as soon as May, so don't think we have seen the end of that.

You can also see from the chart that the number of Notice of Defaults that are recorded seems to have plateaued in the 280 range for the last couple of months.

This in turn affects the number of properties going back to the banks reflected in the number of Trustees Deeds being recorded. February had 95 of those record down from 98 in January. This will cause the number of bank owned listings to increase in the coming months.

The number of Bank owned Properties that sold in February rose to 24. This is a relatively good sized increase over the 17 in January and December that were recorded. I would expect to see this number be pretty consistent over the next few months. It may rise some as well since the number of Trustees Deeds has been pretty high for the last couple of months.

I think the key is going to be what is happening with the number of Notice of Defaults recorded in the coming months. If that number grows even though the number of loans adjusting has decreased then we can guess that those loans aren't as big a problem as once thought.

See You In Escrow!

Santa Barbara Foreclosure Info Jan 2008

The Santa Barbara Foreclosure Chart is showing some interesting changes now that we have a few months of data to compare.

The piece of the process that starts everything else is the recording of the Notice of Default. In January in Santa Barbara County there were 284 recorded, which is the largest number since the mortgage meltdown began.

The next step in the process is the recording of a Trustees Deed. For January there were 98 recorded. This is also the largest number we've seen. This is the number that leads to all the Bank owned properties for sale.

The Bank owned properties or more commonly referred to as REO's that sold in January stayed at the same number we saw in the previous 2 months, 17.

The last, but probably not least line on the chart is the number reflecting how many loans are being adjusted in a given month. You could argue that this is the number that starts all the others moving, but I haven't figured out if there is a direct relationship yet, so I'm holding out. This number for January was 139.

As you can see from the graph the number of loans that adjusted in January is down significantly, but will be climbing in April and May back to the 180 level. This coupled with the rise in the number of Notice of Defaults and Trustees Deeds makes me think we are seeing the worst of this.

I do expect a rise in the number of foreclosed properties being sold based on what we've seen the last 12 months. The number of sales occurring seems to be about 25% of the number of Trustees deeds we record, so with that in mind we may be seeing about 25 bank owned properties closing escrow in a given month in the not too distant future.

I think we are seeing the worst of it, knowing what I know about the number of loans that are going to adjust in the next 6 months. I also think there will be some positive impact on the market with respects to the stimulus package that is being implemented.

So all that is left to say is, See You In Escrow!

Santa Barbara Counties Foreclosure Information

I took a few minutes today to see what the picture looks like for properties in various stages of the foreclosure process in Santa Barbara County. I used an online Dataquick account I have. I first wanted to look at the number of Notice of Defaults that have been filed. This is the first step in the foreclosure process where a trustee on behalf of a lender records a Notice of Default on a property. Borrowers sometimes pay the lender what is owed and then these Notices are rescinded. So a property can be in default more than once. I noticed that there have been a steady increase in the numbers over the last year. The numbers really jumped in July, which would coincide with the Credit problems everyone has heard about. The most recent months show the number of defaults around the 200 number for the county. I then looked at the number of Trustees Deeds that have been recorded. This document is recorded at the end of the foreclosure process and is when the bank takes back the property or an investor buys it. This number seems to have sputtered along until about June where it hit 36 and was followed by 40 in July. The next couple months show a small drop off. The final piece of the foreclosure puzzle is how many properties are banks selling after they have taken them back. That is represented by the number of REO deeds that are being recorded. Those numbers coincided with the number of Trustees Deeds. There were a few more of them from June to September. I am going to start comparing these numbers with the number of loans that are adjusting every month. That will begin in October and we'll see what direction that points this market in. I can tell you I have those numbers starting in October 2007 and ending in July 2008 and October and November are the biggest months during that time frame with loans adjusting. Hopefully that means we have peaked when it comes to these troubled properties. Let me hear your comments. See You In Escrow!