Distressed Inventory Report 10-16-10

By George Thurtle

I am finally caught up now with having the reports become more timely. I will get into the specifics of this week’s numbers but first want to discuss the big news of the last couple of weeks and that is new mess caused by the mortgage servicers not following proper foreclosure procedures. As has been in the news Bank of America has stopped foreclosures on residential homes and many other servicers have pulled back from foreclosing. The upshot is that you will start seeing less homes going to foreclosure and more emphasis on short sales. The reason that lenders will most likely go to more short sales is that they do not need to take title and demonstrate they have taken title properly, they only need to release their interest in the title the present seller has. It avoids the somewhat involved process of forfeclosure to properly acquire title. However what this will do is cause the amount of publicly recorded distressed inventory to decline. Until this probelm gets worked out a better gauge in the future will the amount of MLS listed short sales. So in future reports let’s see if the amount of MLS listed short sales starts increasing and see if the amount of recorded notice of trustee sales starts declining.

The same trend continues an overall reduction in NTS inventory and some big declines in that inventory. 98007 saw a reduction of 7 homes alone in the zip code. It appears that lenders are starting to work more with short sales. Also this week there were couple of new $1,000,000 plus foreclosures in the Gelndale area. However these banks appear very agressive on their pricing and these homes will probably have to sit for a while before the lenders get realistic on their pricing.

Next week there will be a series of posts describing what is happening with the foreclosure mess.

The spreadsheet is here: Bellevue Foreclosure Report 10-16-10

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