Short Sale & Foreclosure for Ventura County - January 2011

Here are the sales for Ventura County January 2011. Based on me taking statistics a bit later than usual and adjusting for recent changes in the underlying data sources I think the Dataquick number will be around 540 for December. That would be the second worst showing for January since I've been keeping records. Some of that is due to Decembers stronger showing which was a pulling forward of demand due to the spike in interest rates.

I don't watch the broader market quite as close as I used to since buying a house but I still look at a narrow segment within Ventura County. My general sense is that the low end if falling away and the mid-market houses are just stagnating, with little inventory to chose from and intense competition for any "deals" that pop up. With rates knocking on 5.25% area that puts intense pressure on the market compared to just a month and a half ago where buyers could get a 4% mortgage rate.

San Fernando Valley home sales report - January 2010

San Fernando Valley Single Family Home sales for January 2010 came in at 494 which is down 22.45% MoM and down 4.63% YoY. The median price for single family homes came in at $380,000 which is down 5.00% MoM and up 8.57% YoY. The supply constrained market is hurting sales in the SFV. Based on what I am seeing in the weekly inventory reports that doesn't appear to be changing anytime soon.

Condo sales came in at 204 which is down 13.55% MoM and up 22.90% YoY. Median price for condos came in at $215,000 which is down 10.41% MoM and up 13.15% YoY. Condos are faring much better than SFH because there is more supply due to all the new condo construction during the boom and it appears some buyers are choosing to buy a condo when they can't find what they want in a detached home.

The red line was my attempt to create a predictor for sales but it hasn't been working out so well since May of this last year. IMHO, it appears that some pendings are being double counted, instead of falling out and going BOM (which would reduce my predictor), they are just switching buyers and updating the pending date which gets them counted in the current months pendings again. This is supposition on my part since I don't know how SRAR constructs their numbers but nothing much else makes sense. Anyways the predictor is predicting sales flat for February.

Ventura County January 2010 Home Sales

Dataquick reported home sales for Ventura County for January 2010 today. Home sales came in at 530 down 8.3% YoY. The median sales price came in at $360,000 up 7.5% YoY. This report was exactly in line with the prediction I made at the beginning of the month. Slowing YoY sales due to constricted inventory, the second worst monthly sales on record. The market is in an artificial state, low sales and high prices because that is exactly the stated goal of the various government agencies. It is amazing to think that their goal is to keep housing unaffordable but that is exactly what is happening.

Just to add to the insanity, I have a bid in on another house. The price isn't great but the house meets every one of our other criteria and I've only seen one other houses since 2005 that has done that even close to our price range.

Short Sale & Foreclosures for the San Fernando Valley - January 2010

Here is the sales breakdown for the San Fernando Valley for January 2010. The SFV has a lot more late reporters as a percentage of sales and so it is a bit tougher to discern right now just how weak or strong sales will ultimately be for January. It appears that sales should be higher YoY when all the late reporters are counted but not significantly strong. These sales levels are extremely weak historically and just an indication of this highly engineered market.

Short Sale & Foreclosure for Ventura County - January 2010

Here are the sales for Ventura County for January 2010. Sales are still very low, with late reporters I expect the official Dataquick numbers will be down a bit YoY at around 550 sales. This continued stagnation in the market is the same boring story, less supply due to government intervention trying to keep prices high at all costs. I don't see any signs of the ice melting yet just more of the same with a bit of seasonal inventory coming on market. The stuff in the affordable ranges gets gobbled up quickly, the overpriced stuff just sits.

If you think I get bored typing the same thing month after month since last January or so you'd be right!

Ventura County Trustee sales for January 2010

Trustee sales for January 2010 in Ventura County came in at 271. With the Treasury announcing the HAMP foreclosure freeze I am surprised sales were even this "good". So far the market is still in a static state. The HAMP guidance given last week gives me a bit of hope that the impasse might be broken but it is an election year and people have shown an unending capacity for doing anything to prolong the crisis instead of dealing with reality.

Trustee Sales for Los Angeles County January 2010

Los Angeles County Trustee sales came in at 3069 for January 2010. Essentially flat compared to the last quarter of 2009.

Orange County Trustee sales for January 2010

Orange County trustee sales for January 2010 came in at 820. As always I am impressed with the number of third party sales in the OC.

San Diego Trustee Sales January 2010

San Diego trustee sales for January 2010 came in at 1285, Basically flat relative to the last quarter of 2009.

Ventura County February 2009 Loan To Value chart

Here is the February 2009 Loan To Value chart for Ventura County. If you click and enlarge the chart it basically shows how much people are putting down at different price points. A dot at 80.0 and $300,000 means that a borrower put 20% down on a $300,000 place. This gives us a feel for how people (down payments, monthly payments and loan type) are getting into the market and where (sale price) they are getting into the market. For jumbo conforming it is getting very difficult to get PMI. So FHA is the only option for loans with less than 20% down.

For conforming loans it is getting difficult to get PMI above 90% LTV and this is where we see the rampant FHA activity. The Jumbo conforming loan limit was about to drop from 729k to 625k and many lenders were phasing it out by November. The jumbo conforming limit is back to 729k this year but its effect was marginal on the market to begin with.

For people in the market right now if you go to the left hand side and look and find around the price at which you are thinking of buying and then you can go to the right and see what your competition has done as far as down payments and loan types.

The FHA loans at the higher price ranges are, in my opinion, very risky. FHA used to be for low income people and were underwritten with lower DTI ratios. Now they are used somewhat by high income people at higher income ratios, their prospect of higher income is low and lower income is high. I think this will affect the higher end move up markets as the people who rushed to buy have little to no equity for many years. I think this is true of FHA used in massive quantities in the market like we have now (which was 38% of the So Cal market in February according to Dataquick). With little down it will take that much longer to buildup significant equity and long term move up and relocation transactions in the market should stay low.

Note: I have added a foreclosure research link to the site, see here.

Ventura County January 2009 Loan To Value chart

Here is the January 2009 Loan To Value chart for Ventura County. If you click and enlarge the chart it basically shows how much people are putting down at different price points. A dot at 80.0 and $300,000 means that a borrower put 20% down on a $300,000 place. This gives us a feel for how people (down payments, monthly payments and loan type) are getting into the market and where (sale price) they are getting into the market.
For jumbo conforming it is getting very difficult to get PMI. So FHA is the only option for loans with less than 20% down. For conforming loans it is getting difficult to get PMI above 90% LTV and this is where we see the rampant FHA activity. The Jumbo conforming loan limit was about to drop from 729k to 625k and many lenders were phasing it out by November. The jumbo conforming limit is back to 729k this year but its effect was marginal on the market to begin with.

For people in the market right now if you go to the left hand side and look and find around the price at which you are thinking of buying and then you can go to the right and see what your competition has done as far as down payments and loan types.

The FHA loans at the higher price ranges are, in my opinion, very risky. FHA used to be for low income people and were underwritten with lower DTI ratios. Now they are used somewhat by high income people at higher income ratios, their prospect of higher income is low and lower income is high. I think this will affect the higher end move up markets as the people who rushed to buy have little to no equity for many years. I think this is true of FHA used in massive quantities in the market like we have now (currently running 37.8% according to Dataquick). With little down it will take that much longer to buildup significant equity and long term move up and relocation transactions in the market should stay low.

Note: I have added a foreclosure research link to the site, see here.

Short Sale & Foreclosure for San Fernando Valley & Ventura County - February 2009

San Fernando Valley:

Ventura County:

Here are the Foreclosure (REO) and Short Sale numbers as a percentage of closed sale for February 2009. I think for Ventura County the lack of REO supply is starting to affect the numbers, though too much can be read into the slow months. I think as the selling season starts we will see these percentages decrease somewhat but the majority of sales will still be distressed. If new distressed inventory doesn't come on the market soon (next 3-4 months) I think we could see a significant slowdown in sales by mid-year there. The San Fernando Valley should fair better because they are still working through a backlog and so supply issues won't be a problem for the next few months.

San Fernando Valley home sales for January 2009

The San Fernando Valley official home sales numbers are out. Single Family Home sales came in at 518, down 25.0% from December and up 60.4% from January 2008 which was near the all time low for sales. Median price came in at $350,000 down 0.9% from December and down 30.0% from the year before. As you can tell from the second chart above this is still very low sales for any January.

Condo sales came in at 166, down 28.1% MoM and up 58.1% YoY. Median price came in at $190,000 which was down 15.6% MoM and 48.4% YoY.

The above chart is just the absolute totals for pending sales, sales and properties that have come back on market (BOM). As you can see from the above graph the absolute number of BOM has stayed steady while sales have fallen as they seasonally do in January. This leads to the following chart:

This is the back on market percentages. Compared to current sales (How the SRAR likes to look at it), current month pendings and previous month pendings.

Short Sale & Foreclosure for San Fernando Valley & Ventura County - January 2009

San Fernando Valley:

Ventura County:

Here are the short sale and foreclosure sales numbers for January 2009 for the San Fernando Valley and Ventura County. There was no dramatic change in ratios with distressed sales still hovering around 70% of the market. Short sales are still making that steady progression as a larger percentage of sales, I think with servicers pre-approving short sales and REO inventory on the market being managed to keep only a 1-2 month supply around at any one time that short sales will continue to grow. We should see the total percentage of distressed sales drop as we come into the selling season but the weekly inventory reports still show that unmotivated sellers are still finding it enormously difficult getting a home sold.

San Fernando Valley Home sales estimates for January 2009

Here are the preliminary sales and price estimates for the San Fernando Valley for January 2009. Single Family Home (SFH) sales are estimated to be 540 with the median price of approximately $349,000. Condo sales are estimated to be 165 with the median price of approximately $220,000. Sales are clearly not going to match the record lows we saw last year. While the yearly comparisons are easy looking at sales historically still shows they are weak but improving. This improvement comes from distressed sales rationalizing the market and prices falling. The economy faltering will probably mute any upside in sales for this next year. We will probably see a mild improvement overall for 2009 but I don't think the planned government programs (lowering of mortgage rates, foreclosure relief and tax credit) will be enough to do brunt the decline in prices or goose sales for the year much more than 15-20%.