The Lenders Are Still Land Barons

Whether the lenders want to be or not they are land barons these days. Countrywide had been winning the race of who takes back the most properties every month until November. They only had 4 on this months list.

Washington Mutual was the big winner with 8 properties, but Deutsche Bank came in a close second with 7. There were only a total of 85 properties taken back in November.

There were a handful of properties on the list that had gone in to default back in 2007 but for the most part most of the properties the lenders took back had been defaulted on since May or June.

Only 13 of those properties had loans over $500,000 with only 1 being over 1 million at $1,348,319. 14 properties on the list were in the Santa Barbara, Goleta areas with the remaining 71 properties being in the Santa Maria and Lompoc areas.

Check them out on the map below.

Countrywide Is The Land Baron Of Santa Barbara County!

I just pulled up the August information for properties being taken back due to foreclosure and Countrywide took back 25% of the overall number for August in Santa Barbara County.

It isn't even worth trying to figure out who was in 2nd. With 211 properties going back to their respective lenders as REO's and Countrywide with 54 (if I counted correctly) the rest of the pack was left in the dust.

I did see the usual suspects though, Wells Fargo, WAMU, Chase etc.....

One field of information I didn't remember seeing in the past was the information on surnames. I don't know what this really has to do with anything, but 107 of the 211 properties had been owned by people with hispanic surnames.

21 of the 211 were in the Santa Barbara, Goleta, Montecito, and Carpinteria areas. If memory serves me correctly, that is 1 less than what occurred in July. So, 180 of the properties on the list are from the Santa Maria, Lompoc, & Santa Ynez Valley.

Bank Owned Properties For April 2008

Santa Barbara County has not been immune to the foreclosure issues facing the country. There are of course some very distinct differences between the North County and the South County when it comes to the properties being foreclosed on and taken back by the bank.

There were 123 properties taken back by the lenders in April. Of those only 7 properties were in the Santa Barbara, Montecito, Goleta, & Carpinteria areas.

The Santa Maria, Lompoc, and Santa Ynez Valley areas took the brunt of the bank owned properties as has been a consistent trend. 116 was the total for all those areas and the hardest hit was Santa Maria.

I'm not expecting this trend to slow down, but I also don't expect it to increase much in the next few months. We have noticed that Santa Maria's property sales had a significant increase in April and I am expecting more of the same since this was a trend in many parts of Southern California as reported by Dataquick.

I do have to throw in the prerequisite disclaimer that this information is deemed reliable but not guaranteed.

March REO's In Santa Barbara County

One of the nice benefits of working at such a good company is that we have a group that specializes in generating information on all kinds of property statistics.

Most recently I have been playing with the information they have on REO's and Notice of Defaults and Notice of Trustee Sales.

I think one of the hot topics these days is where are all the bank owned properties and so my thoughts are to publish this information monthly using the same mapping product that I use for the monthly sales maps.

There were 92 properties that went back to their respective lenders in Santa Barbara County in March. By looking at the map it is very obvious to see that most of the new bank owned properties are in the Santa Maria and Lompoc areas.

I counted 8 properties in the Santa Barbara area, so with a little math that leaves 84 properties in the Lompoc, Santa Maria areas.

Here is a link to a map representing information on REO's for January and February.

I hope this map is helpful, and See You In Escrow!

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

Are There Any Deals Today?

Being asked the question about getting a good deal on a piece of property these days always seems to turn the conversation to foreclosures and bank owned properties.

These bank owned properties are better known as REO's or Real Estate Owned. I decided to do a little homework on the REO's in Santa Barbara County. The properties I decided to check out were the ones where a deed had been recorded making the foreclosing lender the new owner of the property.

I found that there were 203 properties in January and February that the banks had taken back. Of these 203 properties here is how they broke down by city

Buellton 1
Carpinteria 4
Goleta 8
Guadalupe 5
Lompoc 36
Los Alamos 2
Orcutt 1
Santa Barbara 13
Santa Maria 130
Santa Ynez 2
Solvang 1

It doesn't take a degree in mathematics to look at these numbers and see that Lompoc and Santa Maria are where most of the foreclosure activity is. Nearly 82% of the properties are in those 2 areas.

The South Coast has a little over 12% of the properties that went back to the foreclosing lender in January and February. The remaining 6% are spread out amongst the Santa Ynez Valley and the smaller cities in the North County.

The types of properties that are now owned by the bank break down like this
Condominiums (Residential) 21
Multi Family Units 8
Residential Agriculture 2
Single Family Residence 170
Vacant Land 2

Single Family Residences continue to be the types of properties that are being foreclosed on. Maybe next month I will take a look to see how many are second homes or primary residences. Either way these properties are putting a drain on the residential market.

Some specifics about the loan amounts that were foreclosed upon are these
Average Loan Amount $409,129
Highest Loan Amount $1,348,319
Lowest Loan Amount $15,000

These loans that were foreclosed on have some interesting characteristics. The oldest loan was taken out on December 3rd 1997 for $88,738 on a single family residence on Lockwood Dr. in Santa Maria. The most recent loan was taken out on April 27, 2007 for $181,000 on a single family residence on Concha Loma Dr. in Carpinteria.

I find this information all pretty fascinating, but does it help answer the question about there being any real deals out there when you are looking for property. I don't think it does. I don't think it will, but at least you are now armed with hopefully more than you knew before about the properties that have been taken back by the lender.

If you would like more information on these properties click here and you will be taken to a map of the county showing these 203 properties. Good Luck in your search.

2007 REO's, Where Are They?

One of the topics of conversation in recent months has been on foreclosures. Where are they, how many, etc.... With the help of LandAmerica foreclosure services I have been able to get a list of all the properties that ended up being foreclosed on by the respective lender and ultimately owned by that lender.

If you didn't know what REO stood for, it is Real Estate Owned and I believe it is a term coined by lenders to represent the properties they own via foreclosure.

The map below represents all of those properties for the year 2007. You can zoom in to a particular part of the county and see which properties are represented. If you would rather browse the list of addresses, they are to the right of the map you can then click the one you want more information on and it will appear. I hope this is useful.

There are over 400 properties displayed on this map, so it can take a few seconds to load.

Santa Barbara Foreclosure Info Nov. 2007

I wasn't sure if there would be anything interesting to post about until I gathered the numbers. I am only hazarding a guess when I say that if you look at the last few months it would appear that the foreclosures in the county are slowing down a bit. The number of Notice of Defaults that were recorded in November fell to 121 as compared to 176 and 209 in the previous 2 months. I would think that would be the leading indicator of what the foreclosure activity is. The bank owned properties that sold were 17 which is a bit more than in previous months which might indicate there will be less of these properties on the market soon. The properties the banks took back was 40 which was down slightly from last months 45. The number of loans that adjusted in November was 220 which is the highest number I currently show through June of 2008. You can draw your own conclusions, but from what I can tell the foreclosures look to be slowing down, and hopefully that isn't because of the holidays season. See You In Escrow!

Santa Barbara Foreclosure Info

I started keeping track of the Notice of Default recordings as well as the Trustees Deeds and REO deeds. I have added a new item to the chart this month showing the number of mortgages in the County that are going to reset in that month. The number of Trustees Deeds jumped up a bit which you would probably expect because of the increase in the Notice of Defaults that were recorded the previous months. The REO's stayed about the same and the number of loans that are adjusting is obviously not showing us anything until we get a few months on the chart. I think the fact that the Notice of Defaults has gone down the last couple of months is good news and should reflect in fewer Trustees Deeds and REO's on the market. The one thing I am a bit naive about is whether or not the NOD's are going down because of a seasonal influence or not. Stay tuned, and 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!