RealtyStore Real Estate Blog

Peter Y. Hong (LATimes) serves up hors d’oeuvres, fine wine and a little bit of foreclosure news. Hong explains how the foreclosure wave has moved past the guarded gates and into Napa Valley’s exquisite high-end real estate housing market.

Buyers last week of a Spanish-style, 3,220-square-foot house on a cul-de-sac here got a bargain: $1 million for a hilltop home in Northern California’s wine country, with views to San Francisco in the distance.

Two years ago, the same property sold for $1.4 million. But after the lender foreclosed on the property, the home was deeply discounted. Real estate agent Michael Snider, who handled the sale, thinks more such sales are on the way.

You can read more on the Napa Valley foreclosure problem by purchasing the full article in the LA Times’ Archives.

Home owners who get into investment real estate should be very careful about exceeding their spending limits, like Shawn Forgaad. Read his 9 home foreclosure story…

“Shawn Forgaad, software product manager from Santa Cruz, Calif., says he speculated in a major way during the boom, buying nine houses with Pay Option or negative amortizion loans. Now his house of cards is crashing down.

One out of every 519 homes nationally received a foreclosure filing in April, RealtyTrac figures. Some 53,000 were repossessed. The country, meanwhile, marches on to what could be one million foreclosures for the entire year. Washington debates what to do to fix the mess.

California cities account for six of the ten U.S. markets with the highest foreclosure rates. Forgaad, the speculator, says he’s learned his lesson and is moving his family to lower-cost North Carolina where they can start fresh.”

Read the full article:

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/
hotproperty/archives/2008/05/one_man_nine_fo.html

Foreclosure flood: 1,000 auctions per day in California

LA Times reports in April there were one thousand home auctions per day in California. “California’s foreclosure crisis passed another ominous milestone in April, when more than 1,000 foreclosed homes were auctioned off every weekday at courthouses across the state”.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laland/2008/05/foreclosure-flo.html

According to our California Foreclosure Report, California’s foreclosure activity has increased 38% in the first quarter of 2008. Our California foreclosure statistics is broken by county and shows the change from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the first quarter of 2008.

Q1 2008 California Foreclosure Statistics