RE State of the Union

by Jim the Realtor | Jan 22, 2010 | Buying at Trustee Sale, Sales and Price Check, Thinking of Buying?, Thinking of Selling? | 21 comments

We’re past the holiday season, the Chargers have checked out, and February is ten days away. 

Let’s review current market conditions:

Trustee Sales for North SD County Coastal SFRs (Carlsbad to La Jolla)

There are more properties on the NOTS auction list (444) than on the NOD list (337), which at casual glance might make you think we’re winding down. 

But the NOTS list is loaded with a rolling group of old defaulters that get postponed each month – 82% of the properties on the auction list have had at least three postponements.

SINCE DECEMBER 1st:

New NODs: 122

New NOTSs: 88

Trustee Sales:  67

Trustee-Sale Cancellations:  75

MLS sales: 312

(255 regular, 35 REOs, 22 short sales)

The slow-drip system is working beautifully for the banks.  Virtually all of the 444 auction properties have had a sale date since December 1st, yet only 142 had some resolution (32%), and that’s being kind – many of those cancelled will be getting back in line.  

The blob of defaulted properties is impeding the foreclosure channels with delays and uncertainty. Buyers hoping to snag a trustee-sale deal will need to be very patient.

We are following twenty properties that already had sale dates this month, and only one ended up on the ‘steps (sold to a third party), and the rest postponed.

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Neg-Am Recasts

We’ve all seen the charts, there are $134 billion in option-ARMs that are expected to recast over the next two years.  About 1 out of 3 option-ARMs are delinquent or in foreclosure now, so we’ll see boatloads of short sales and REO/flipper properties being offered for years to come.

How many in your area?  I’m going to try and obtain more breakdowns by zip, but the last count showed that 5.5% of the properties with mortgage in Encinitas, Carmel Valley, and RSF had a neg-am or option-ARM.

Recast chart

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Flippers Are Active

With the lack of quality inventory available, flippers have an open playing field.  But with postponements dominating the court house steps, there are only 1-2 trustee sales per day being bought by a third-party of properties from Carlsbad to La Jolla, which doesn’t sound like much.  But when compared to December’s total of 238 SFRs sold on the MLS, we could see flippers wind up being 10% (or more) of the market in 2010.

I’m working on the count of recently-flipped properties.

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Sandicor’s New Public Website

Our local MLS provider, Sandicor, has had a new public-MLS website “in development” for the last two years, and should be ready in the next few months.  According to sources, all they need to do is determine how to brand it, and who is going to pay for it – though that sounds nebulous.

The Houston Board of Realtors has pioneered the public-MLS, including a realtor-feedback feature, which Sandicor is considering.  I heartily recommend it, as realtors we need to provide a way to police ourselves.

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Recent MLS Sales

Just in case there was some influence on early-December sales from the tax credit, here’s how the Dec 15 to Jan 15 period compares to previous years:

The basic sales stats look decent, in spite of the calamity.