Tuesday, June 12, 2007

The Usual Suspects

From Reuters:

U.S. home foreclosures in May jumped 90 percent from a year earlier, reflecting a poor spring housing market and foreshadowing even higher levels later in 2007, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said on Tuesday.
...
The cities with the nation's top three metropolitan foreclosure rates were all located in California, and three other California cities also documented foreclosure rates among the top 10.

A 49 percent increase in foreclosure activity ensured that Stockton, Cali., would register the nation's highest metropolitan foreclosure rate at one filing for every 88 households, which was nearly 7.5 times the national a average.

Merced, Cali., documented the second highest metro foreclosure rate, one foreclosure filing for every 100 households, followed by Modesto, Cali., with one foreclosure filing for every 118 households. Other California metros in the top 10 were Riverside-San Bernardino at No. 5, Vallejo-Fairfield at No. 6, and Sacramento at No. 7.

15 comments:

smf said...

And the pain will continue, as I already mentioned that in the last few days I have seen the slow return of 2003(!) prices.

Talk about killing the comps.

anoop said...

where have you seen 2003 prices?

According to what I see on Zillow prices are still at around late 2004 levels.

patient renter said...

smf, where did you do your price checking at? I want to try and get a gauge of price levels in a certain area.

smf said...

We sold and bought in 2003.

Sold a 1297 sq. ft. and bought a 2300 sq.ft. in 95827.

Sold for $245K, bought at $348K.

There is a 1596 sq.ft. in 95827 for $299K. The same model sold in 8/30 near us for $300K.

There is a 2558 sq.ft. home in 95827 listed at $359K, and a similar model has been stuck on the market at $460K.

Now visit 95655. The price range of the 4062 sq. ft. model goes from $560 to $750K. And there are many small houses in between.

I checked on both sacbee and realtor.com. I stand by what I said, 2003 prices are slowly getting here.

smf said...

Correction, the 1596 model sold in 8/03 for $300K. And of course we bought our house (custom, not track) in 7/03. But the 2558 model shows how pricing is going.

Will be fun to see what they sell for.

Where can you find pending sale status now? Sacbee no longer shows that.

Wadin' In said...

smf,

You may find pending status at http://www.metrolistmls.com/

I don't use the Sacramento Bee any more for that very reason.

BTW, Sippn clued me into this site, so you need to thank him. Come on, it won't be that hard. Just say "Thank you, Sippn".

Very good.

smf said...

Thank you, Sippn

... said...

At least you ddin't compare me to a lawyer...ha!

norcaljeff said...

This shouldn't be news to anyone other than Sippin. As the CEOs of Toll Brothers and DR Horton has said publicly, "2007 is going to suck!"

Josh said...

Hey, we're being flamed over on the Sac Bee comment section for the new Towers article:

Flame

Pretty funny if you ask me. :)

smf said...

Max, let me answer this flame here.

Saca did not sell all the condos, only 45% were reserved, and we don't know how many people actually intended to live there. After all, it is now coming to light that some of these condo developments ran up to 70% speculator purchases.

There was an intense rise in construction costs (remember please, 18 years in the business), the usual excuse was that it was because of China, etc.

That was a lie.

It was because of the bubble. Twice as many homes than required were built. And commercial ALWAYS follows the statistics of residential construction, since it is assumed that houses will have people living in them that will require services.

Construction costs have gone down, sometimes significantly, since the bubble burst 2 years ago.

If Saca actually had DEMAND for his building, it would be under construction now, not dead and buried.

And for all those dreamers (BTW, I absolutely love Sacramento), a developer could come here and build the next Empire State building. You can build an airport that can handle 100 million people a year. But the Sacramento market does not justify such projects here.

We can all dream, but for dreams to become real, they have to be based on some reality.

Alice Cook said...

US foreclosures are going up like a rocket ie. more supply.

At the same time, mortgage lenders are tightening borrowing standards ie. less demand.

More supply, less demand, price falls

RMB said...

I don't pay much attention to the comments made by people in the Sac Bee. Most of them have had their heads so far up their you know what for so long, if they were to remove them they would go instantly blind from the sun hitting their eyes.
They want to talk about vision and moving Sacramento into the 21st century and all this other crap. Here a vision for you, get rid of the full time legislature, repeal all the stupid laws passed in the last 20 years, close the border, and become more business friendly.
I have always wondered what it is that people do in Sacramento? This is a city with a population of over 1.5 million people yet no Fortune 500 company is headquartered here.
I used to live in Minneapolis and there are about 15 Fortune 500 companies headquartered there and it shows.
Sacramento wants to move forward but they are not willing to draw the business that will allow them to do so.
A new stadium and a few condos downtown won't improve the city, bringing some major employers will.

Nuff said

anoop said...

>>>
bringing some major employers will.
>>>

I totally agree with this. Look at the Research Triangle Park, NC...it continues to draw investment from corporations because they offer them great tax breaks. Doing somethign like that would be a whole lot better for Sacramento than offering a condo development a tax break!

norcaljeff said...

RMB - Great points. It takes money to buy RE. But don't try to convince Sippin, he thinks E. Sac and Davis will flurish even in a recession. Who needs employers or jobs? I guess those Davis homes pay their own mortgages.