California foreclosure activity continues to plummet as defaulting homeowners have an ever expanding array of foreclosure mitigation paths to choose from. They can get HAMP’d, HARP’d, HAFA’d, HOPE’d, FHA Loss Mitigated, to name a few. While the alphabet soup of Federal programs has successfully prolonged, or catapulted delinquent homeowners out of the foreclosure process, the unintended consequence is now an acute lack of available housing inventory for sale. Any sort of housing market recovery is dependent upon adequate inventory, which is now missing in much of California.
January Notices of Default, the first stage of the foreclosure process, posted the biggest one-month decline since April 2011, falling 60.5 percent from December. In addition, Notices of Default were down a whopping 77.7 percent for the year, and are now at the lowest levels in our database dating back to September 2006. The surprising decline in Notices of Default is likely due to the California Homeowner Bill of Rights that went into effect January 1.
Source: ForeclosureRadar.com – http://www.foreclosureradar.com
Notices of Trustee Sale tumbled as well, falling 34.8 percent for the month, and 65.7 percent for the year.
Meanwhile, foreclosure sales in January totaled a paltry 5,447, down 7.8 percent, from for the month, and 57.8 percent for the year.
Source: ForeclosureRadar.com – http://www.foreclosureradar.com
What is unusual about the January foreclosure activity is that in the past, activity increased in January after a slowdown in December. The expected January pick-up failed to materialize this year.
For a complete summary of foreclosure stats and trends please click on the following links:
For California Foreclosure Stats and Trends, click here.
For Arizona Foreclosure Stats and Trends, click here.
For Nevada Foreclosure Stats and Trends click here.
For Oregon Foreclosure Stats and Trends click here.
For Washington Foreclosure Stats and Trends click here.
Keep watching for the next few months. Wells Fargo has done a massive move towards foreclosures in the Northern California area and may be preparing to drive the housing market lower again.
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The foreclosure situation here in Reno and all of Nevada for that matter is on the same page as you in my home state of California. Assembly bill 284 is slowing down foreclosures yes, but with good intentions the cost of people becoming bankrupt is not worth the inventory infact may even hurt the economy in the long run. Your “alphabet soup of Federal programs” is the way in my opinion the best for all. Great post.
-Daytona
Great info thank you. The Homeowner Bill of Rights plays a big part in the recent slow down in CA. Once that gets figured out I think we’ll some of those figures creep up a tick. Inventory shrinking is successfully driving prices up. The good news is that CA is now seeing 65% of the market return to standard sales. However, as you mentioned for real and sustainable market recovery we must end the market manipulation. Bring on the inventory!