Foreclosures jump in California - Again

DISCOVERY BAY

January 15, 2008 11:39am

• December sees 45.4 percent jump in notices of default over November

• ‘We have yet to see the real impact from the ARM resets’

The pace of home foreclosures in the Central Valley and across most of California is quickening, a foreclosure information company says Tuesday.

There was a “gargantuan jump” in Notice of Default filings in December and “we’re already observing a record pace of auction sales in January,” says ForeclosureRadar of Discovery Bay.

“We are just now starting to see the impact of the credit crunch, and have yet to see the real impact of ARM resets,” the company says.

(Sean O'Toole, founder of ForeclosureRadar, talks about the new figures in a CVBT Audio Interview. Please click on the link below to listen or to download the MP3 audio file.)

December 2007 saw a 45.4 percent jump in the notices of default (NOD), the initial notice that a homeowner receives once they fail to pay their mortgage, over November, ForeclosureRadar says.

The number of NODs in December was 32,948 compared to 22,665 in November, it says.

December auction sales increased by 4.1 percent from November, to a total of 12,783 properties with a loan value of $5.18 billion.

Additionally, a total of 9,001 properties were sold at auction in just the first eight business days of January, with daily average sales 76 percent higher than in December.

For the Central Valley, ForeclosureRadar’s figures for December’s NODs and sales are:

• Kern County: 1,039 NOD; 396 sales

• Tulare County: 319 NODs; 92 sales

• Kings County: 47 NODs; 19 sales

• Fresno County: 758 NODs; 299 sales

• Madera County: 168 NODs; 56 sales

• Merced County: 373 NODs; 215 sales

• Stanislaus County: 1,033 NODs; 381 sales

• San Joaquin County: 1,402 NODs; 542 sales

• Sacramento County: 2,145 NODs; 972 sales

• Yolo County: 130 NODs; 59 sales

• Butte County: 68 NODs; 31 sales

“The impact of the credit crisis that began in August is now clearly starting to show its impact,” says ForeclosureRadar founder Sean O'Toole. “Many analysts fail to understand the delays inherent in the foreclosure process, and I believe we have yet to see the real impact from the ARM resets that began in earnest last October.”

The majority of loans going to auction continue to have been originally made in 2006 (52 percent), 2005 (34 percent), 2007 (8 percent) and 2004 (5.4 percent), the company says.

ForeclosureRadar says it is the only website that tracks every California foreclosure with daily updates on foreclosure auctions.