What is interesting is the composition of the homes which are NTS. There is a lot of condiminium inventory.  However in West Bellevue (WB) I am seeing a number of upper end $1,000,000 dollar plus homes which are now going NTS. So it is the high end and the low end of the market that is seeing the distress. As has been discussed earlier I think you will see more high end homes as the affluent who have resources are starting to drain those resources and are not seeing the bounce in their businesses or occupations occur in a more normal cycle. These people are having to make decisions that never would have to make.

The apreadsheet is here: Bellevue Foreclosure Report 9-4-10

In addition it appears inventories have peaked. They are not dropping but the numbers are not rising. The issue however is that in the next few months with the same amount of inventory and half of the sales than previous months what will happen to pricing. I am starting to see a lot of pricing pressure; particularly for short sales.

The spreadsheet is here: Weekly scorecard 8-30-10

If the distressed inventory is peaking that will be good for the market overall. However now the big concern in the next couple of months is a negative news cycle as Wall Street figures out that it was overly optimistic about the economy and comes to the realization that this cycle is not the traditional recovery cycle they are used to.

The spreadsheet is here: Bellevue Foreclosure Report 8-28-10

At some point in time the gap between the pending sales and the closed sales needs to narrow in order to see where this market will settle in at.

The spreadsheet is here: Weekly scorecard 8-24-10

The one trend that is interesting is that a lot of the reduction in inventory was for the Notice of Trustee Sale, it appears some of these homes are selling and some of these short sales actually closing. The last few months has seen this number steadly rise. Again it appears to be falling. A fall in this number was a sign the market was picking up like what happened last spring but I am not sensing that on a day to day basis yet. Let’s see what happens.

The spreadsheet is here: Bellevue Foreclosure Report 8-21-10

The spreadsheet is here: Weekly scorecard 8-17-10

Like a nuclear blast you can say the lucky ones were the ones who were incinerated in the initial blast. These would have been the sub prime borrowers who have been foreclosed in 2007 and 2008 and have written off their debt and are renting and building their resources. The unlucky ones are those who lived and are slowly dying from radiation poisoning and are struggling to hang on and hope they can last long enough until the effects of the blast are behind them.  

Part of the good news regarding the dissipating the effects of the blast are that in the spreadsheet you will see the Notice of Trustee Sales is falling. The reason are potentially two fold. The first is that the house goes to foreclosure and is now a bank owned home. The other is that it has been sold in a short sale. Keep and eye for an increase of the bank owned homes as this will be an indicator if the market is absorbing the NTS homes through either a short sale or foreclosure.

The spreadsheet is here: Bellevue Foreclosure Report 8-14-10

The pricing appears stable with no real clear trend either up or down.  The indication here is if you are a seller you know where the price needs to be to sell and overall there are fewer buyers as indicated by the closed and pending sales. In addition in looking at the sales it is very evident the homes that are in condition or if older remodeled with new appliances and baths are the onesselling quickly. Some of the FNMA bank homes have had to take steep discounts to under $300,000. That has not been seen for a long time.

The spreqadsheet is here: Weekly scorecard 8-9-10

The listed inventory remains short sale and bank inventory remains very stagnant with not much movement. Also the quality of the inventory seems to be declining with most of the newer homes gone, except a couple in East Bellevue. There is more homes suffering maintenance and upkeep issues. A lot of older homes in poor repair. The buyers in this market severly discount these homes because they may not want to do the work and they have to use out of pocket money mainly to get it done and not many buyers have the money after the purchase. That is why you see reasonably priced homes in good condition which have had the kitchen and baths update go very quickly while others just sit. Eventually the prices on these homes will keep coming down until there is some incentice to fix the home up. Thee are not many flippers anymore and they need to get the homes really cheap in order to justify a flip. However the flippers are the ones who mainly update the inventory. Recently FNMA has found the discounts to be so severe thay are actually contracting with local contractors to repair the homes so they are marketable. This the first wise use of tax payer money I have seen.

The spreadsheet is here: Bellevue Foreclosure Report 8-7-10

In the spreadsheet for West Bellevue in the pending sales you see the N/A comment instead of a number. This is sometimes done when the data is minimal and conflicting. In this situation the two pending sales had a huge spread in price and put the per sq. ft. number at an excessively high price. However you can finally see the per sq. ft. prices are starting to move up. Both South Bellevue and East Bellevue had significant jumps in per sq. ft. prices. It will be interesting to see if this is a continuing trend but if the upper end inventory continues to move it will start pulling all prices up.

The spreadsheet is here: Weekly scorecard 8-2-10