California Foreclosure Sales Exceed 1,000 Per Day

A Record Month for California Foreclosure Activity

Discovery Bay, CA, May 13, 2008 - PropertyRadar, the only website that tracks every California foreclosure with daily auction updates, today issued its monthly California Foreclosure Report. April foreclosure numbers were up in all categories, creating extraordinary indicators. Average daily auction sales exceeded 1,000 properties a day for the first time in California's history.

High-level findings include:

1. 1. Notices of Default - the filings for the first step in California's foreclosure process increased only slightly to set a new record of 44,101 new filings.
   2. Notices of Trustee Sale, which are issued approximately 3 months following a Notice of Default, increased 7.8 percent in April surpassing the previous record with a total of 29,892 new filings.
   3. April foreclosure sales at auction jumped 44 percent over March to a record 22,838 sales, with a combined loan value of $9.45 Billion. The majority of these sales received no third-party bid and reverted back to the lender despite the largest across-the-board discounts ever offered at trustee sale auctions.

"We expected a significant increase in auction sales based on previous default patterns," said Sean O'Toole, founder of PropertyRadar. "Unfortunately, the continued increases in defaults tell us that the worst is still ahead. It is time for lenders to accept this reality, and start approving short sales rather than forcing more than two-thirds of troubled homeowners through the entire foreclosure process."Lenders added 22,324 properties to their real estate-owned or "REO" inventory in April. Last month DataQuick reported that 38.4% of all home sales in California were from this REO inventory, equaling approximately 9,432 properties. Based on those levels, lenders are increasing REO inventories 1.36 times faster than they are able to resell them.

In April, it took lenders an average of 140 days from Notice of Default to the property being sold at auction. Average discounts at auction were 25%, but nearly half of all properties taken to auction offered discounts of 30% or more from the current loan balance. The majority of these loans were 80% LTV first mortgages, making discounts of 40 to 50% from the prior sales price common in many parts of the state. The largest discounts offered in major Southern California counties were in Santa Barbara (29 percent) and Riverside (28 percent). The smallest were Los Angeles (19 percent) and Orange (21 percent). The spread was wider in Northern California, with Merced offering the state larges discounts (37 percent), and San Francisco the smallest (12 percent).In a sign that foreclosures are affecting every part of the state, foreclosure sales nearly doubled in both Marin County (96 percent increase), and Orange County (up 82 percent).

PropertyRadar April Report by County

Sign up to receive the California Foreclosure Report

CALIFORNIA FORECLOSURE REPORT METHODOLOGY

Rankings are based on population per foreclosure sale.

NDF indicates the number of Notices of Default that were filed at the county, and NTS indicates filed Notices of Trustee Sale.

Sales indicate the number of properties sold at a foreclosure auction. Percentage changes are based on monthly Sales. The data presented by PropertyRadar is based on county records and individual sales results from daily foreclosure auctions throughout the state—not estimates or projections.