Distressed Inventory Report 1-30-10
The trend continues. East Bellevue (EB) had a big jump in overall distressed inventory which went from the 113 homes the week before to 123 homes this week. This week alone there were 8 new Notice of Trustee Sale (NTS) alone. It does look like the lenders are getting geared up to take these homes back. South Bellevue (SB) also saw an increase of total distressed inventory from 52 homes to 55 homes and this week 5 new NTS. Last week there were 4 new NTS. What is surprising is that there wasn’t a bigger jump in inventory given the new NTS. Things seem to keep selling but not as fast as the new NTS notices are coming through. West Bellevue was the exception. It saw a decrease from 51 to 55 homes. with the number of NTS overall being down. As a matter of fact customers I am working with are frustrated there is not more upper end distressed inventory. In WB there is only one bank owned home listed.
A disturbing trend is starting to emerge. The middle calss neighborhoods such as are in EB are really starting to take the brunt of foreclosures. The 98008 zip code in particular. The higher you go in price the less the problem and in fact in WB the problem appears to be easing. While I maintained the real estate recovery was going to be a top down recovery in this area, this is not good news overall. Something needs to be done to put people back to work. Our GDP increased 5.7% this week over the last quarter but compared to last year for the same quarter it was little increased but the most distressing part is that same GDP was created with about 3,000,000 fewer jobs. Shrinking our way to propserity will not work and eventually will cause the economy to begin contracting again. This is the message the stock market has finally figured out.
Here is the spreadsheet: Bellevue Foreclosure Report 1-30-10