I’d like to say that this is as bad as it gets. I’d like to say it, but I don’t think that is true.

In California alone, just released figures show that last month, 1,000 (that’s one THOUSAND) foreclosed homes were brought to auction each and every weekday–a 44 percent increase just from the month before.

Nationally, things aren’t all that much better, except for a few markets.

The National Association of Realtors surveyed the prices of existing single-family homes and found between January and March, median prices dropped in 100 of 149 metropolitan areas, according to the Associated Press.

Too bad that relief doesn’t really seem on the way.

Congress is still trying to come up with some sort of relief legislation that will please Democrats, Republicans and the White House, but credit remains tight and the victims (and yes, many are victims) of what began as a subprime mortgage mess, keep mounting with no end in sight.

Brokers will tell you that as prices keep going down–they are and they will–there will be bargins to be had and they are correct.

The only problem is that the credit crunch also shows no sign of going away any time soon, so that leaves a whole lot of potential bargin takers left in the cold.

What do you think? After all, your guess is as good as anyone else’s.

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Tags: california, california foreclosures, default, Economy, foreclosure, Foreclosures, housing, NAR, realtor

Anyone living in California knows that it is the aftermath of an earthquake that reveals its true intensity, not the numbers generated by some graph at a university. An earthquake is really measured in dishes broken, windows smashed or, in the worst cases, houses destroyed.

And so it is that in California, the aftermath of a housing fiasco, is now being felt in lost revenue and painful decisions to slash state budgets—something bound to be repeated in other states as the aftershocks from the mortgage/credit crunch continue unabated.

California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is now asking state departments to come up with plans for drastic spending cuts on the order of 10 percent and maybe more–this because of the housing market which, in California, is not so much a market as it is a cemetery of dead American dreams.

Education, transportation, health care, among the things to be directly impacted, says the Los Angeles Times.

And, reports the Times, economists are warning of more bad news ahead.

“We are among a handful of states that has a lot of exposure to the housing crash,” the Times quotes one former state economist who says that property, income and sales taxes are all off.

California prides itself on being in the vanguard of many movements–sadly, it is in the vanguard once again. But for once, it would probably prefer to be at the back of the pack on this one.

Tags: california, crunch, Economy, housing crisis, recession, Schwarzenegger

Foreclosures Fall in El Paso

The El Paso Times picked up a story indicating that their city’s housing market may be doing better then the rest of the country. Foreclosures in El Paso, Texas have fallen 32 percent in the third quarter from the same period last year. In comparison, statewide, Texas foreclosures increased 18 percent in the third quarter, and nationwide, foreclosures increased 43 percent in the same period.

Southern California Sales Slip
According to the Mercury News home sales in Southern California slowed down to a 10-year low in October. For the month 22,117 new and resale houses and condos were sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties, a 22% decline from October of ‘05. The last time less homes were sold during the month of October was in 1996 with 18,505 sales.

60 Foreclosures A Day During September in Massachusetts

While things are looking up in El Paso, they are moving in the other direction in Massachusetts. In the third quarter, foreclosures climbed 66% year over year to 4,891 — “the biggest increases during that time have been in Dartmouth (211 percent), Palmer (126 percent), Bridgewater (126 percent), Mashpee (123 percent) and North Attleboro (123 percent)” reports the Boston Business Journal.

Detroit Rock Foreclosure City
Things aren’t looking up in Michigan. From the Flint Journal, RealtyTrac’s numbers indicate that “Detroit’s foreclosure rate of one new foreclosure filing for every 80 households was more than 41/2 times the national average.” That is not a statistic the good people of Michigan want to hear.

Tags: california, detroit, ElPaso, flint, Foreclosures, massachusetts, michigan, southern

For years, the advice to many on the East Coast was to head west to seek their fame and fortune, not to mention real estate deals and good housing.
But, according to an article in the Napa Valley Register, the foreclosure rate in California has hit a four year high.

Lending institutions sent out almost 27 thousand default notices to homeowners for the three month period ending this September, according to the data quoted in the article.

Says one senior loan consultant in the piece : “I think the foreclosures that will happen will be those people who took out 100 percent financing loans over the last two years.”

The Napa Valley paper couldn’t resist,however, pointing out that in Napa Valley, there is actually “encouraging news.”

“The market is not tanking in Napa County,” one consultant told the paper.

Tags: california, default, financing, Foreclosures, lending, napa, valley

A drop of 2 percent…that is what is expected to happen to housing prices in California during 2007, according to the state Association of Realtors as reported by Eve Mitchell in the Mercury News. Some good news,though. The market, says the Mercury News article, should fair slightly better up in the Bay Area, in large measure because there is a much tighter housing supply there.

So, where in California are housing prices expected to take the biggest beating? According the article, the Central Valley,the wine country,the San Diego area and the Riverside/San Bernardino regions.

Tags: california, declining, drop, housing, prices

A new report out of UC Berkley brings sobering news to the people of California. The Mercury News’s report headlined, “Housing funk spreads to jobs: Low-Income Workers Fail to Keep Pace With Inflation” details how the economic recovery in California since the dot-com bubble has not truly reached either the middle class or the lowest income citizens.

Although the housing boom has led to growth in construction and other jobs, and many peoples’ net-worth have grown, the average American is not really any better off then before the recent “recovery”.

`During this economic recovery, the rising tide has lifted only a very few number of boats, those at the top of income distribution,” said Jean Ross, executive director of the budget project, a think tank. Inflation has chewed up just about all of the wage gains for middle-income workers and more than erased gains for low-income employees.

Adjusted for inflation, the pay of low-wage workers, those in the bottom fifth of income earners, decreased by 0.9 percent between 2003 and 2005, the budget project reported. Over the same period, the inflation-adjusted wage of the typical California worker increased 0.1 percent. Wages of those in the top fifth rose 0.9 percent.

The cost of transportation, food, and entertainment are all more expensive and the average American is feeling it. If policies are not changed to help out the middle class and poor, inflation will continue to make these people even poorer, while the rich will continue to get richer.

In the long run, it is the middle class that keeps our economy going. The rich cannot alone keep it afloat. If the middle class stops spending their money because they are spending much more of their incomes on housing costs, and other goods and services, the discretionary spending is going to get hit big-time. As a result, so too will the economy.

Tags: boom, bubble, california, Economy, housing, inflation, recovery