July Foreclosures

[Alan]

7/1/2007 - 7/31/2007: 299
7/1/2008 - 7/31/2008: 728

O. M. G.!!!

143% increase.

This is a very high water mark.
June 2008 was 576.
May 2008 was the last high water mark at 591.

[Big Mike 34]

[Robroy]

IIRC, 2007 was way up from 2006.

[Alan]

7/1/2006-7/31/2006: 264

But prices were rising then. It was easy to avoid foreclosure proceedings (either by refinancing and using equity gain to pay your mortgage or by selling).

[Robroy]

[Alan]

The percent increases are so dramatic for that reason, but these are the highest foreclosure rates I've seen in the time periods for which I done searches. I would guess that goes back around ten years.

[Robroy]

[jillayne]

Ha. Of course it's going to get much worse! But we've been saying this for many months now.

Here's some street talk for you to back up my claim that it's going to CONTINUE to get worse ("it" being foreclosures)

Realtors in my classes are reporting more and more short sales in the mix of existing inventory.

Loan originators are reporting that they have borrowers who want/need to refinance out of an ARM but simply cannot qualify under the new, tighter underwriting guidelines.

Admittedly I'm only one person and this is a narrow slice of view, however, I interact with hundreds of Realtors and LOs every month in King/Sno/Pierce counties.

Agents who use to carry four to six listings at a time are telling me that nothing is selling and they have literally NO buyers to work with......medium to top-level producers are worried.

[Robroy]

[jillayne]

Hey Alan, I needed foreclosure stats for July for my class tomorrow and you were the first person I thought of.

Thanks for running the numbers each month.

[Alan]

My pleasure, Jillayne.

Just remember that these are estimates. Not all of them are foreclosures (although I think the vast majority of them are). WA has judicial and non-judicial foreclosures. I think the NTS are non-judicial -- they are the easier kind that don't require court hearings. There is another document for judicial foreclosures and I'm not counting those.

If I remember correctly, the non-judicial foreclosures are non-recourse foreclosures. The judicial foreclosures are recourse, but there are some pretty strong protections for the forclosee to redeem the property.

I'm not sure I right about all of that though and I may be getting the two types confused.

[jillayne]

Hey Alan, thanks. I figured as much. The judicial foreclosures, I would imagine, are a small number compared to the NTS.

If we're counting/comparing NTS numbers, then yes, these are only estimates as not all NTS' go all the way to auction.

It's still a huge increase.

[Alan]

I like to think of it as a metric of people in fiancial distress.