Distressed Inventory Report

By George Thurtle

It looks that the servicers are starting to get more active. The numbers are up for foreclosures and NTS. This is the firt “spike” that I have seen. The last weeks since the first of the year the numbers had been treading water going up or down a little bit. This week definetly is the first big uptick. Since the first of the year I had been hearing from the a couple of the trustee servicers; these are the guys who actually do the sale; were saying that there was more volume coming down the pipeline. The issue was a lot of foreclosures were being deferred because of the new Washington State law which requires the lenders to show a good faith effort to contact the borrower and make a good faith effort to seek an alternative to foreclosure. This requirement has added a 30 days to the process. It now takes a minimum time of 220 to foreclose after the initial default. Many situations are stretching to a year or more after the initial defalut. A property that has had its Notice of Trustee Sale posted has already been through the process since the sale date had already been set.

What is interesting is that a survey of most of the inventory shows that a great majority of the foreclosures are at the lower end of the price range no matter what the area. There is very little new construction since maost of that inventory left has been foreclosed and sold and there is no replacement inventory being built. In vestors looking for rentals or someone looking who is willing to put some effort into fixing up a bank owned or short sale property looks like they will have some opportunity.

The spreadsheet is here: Bellevue Foreclosure Report 4-3-10

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