San Diego Specifics

I wanted to post a couple of numbers specific to San Diego for the month of May. (See my last post for info on California and the foreclosure market lingo).

NOD: 3,362
NTS: 2,801

So, there are nearly 3,000 REO’s that can potentially hit the San Diego market this month and in the months to come, each month. Not to mention other homes that are already for sale or homes that will come on the market that are not REO’s. As a reference, the local MLS shows around 2,200 units sold in San Diego in April, 2008. Note that April, May and June will probably have some decent sales numbers due to seasonal trends. However, once we get into late summer and fall – it is going to be dismal. Not only because sales will slow but because REO’s will just keep piling into the system.

If you want to buy a home in Southern California right now – choose one that you will be happy with for the next 10 years. Also, resolve that you won’t panic and freak-out when the value of your home continues to fall for the next many months – it will come back, but not for awhile. For my part – I’m not interested in trying to catch falling knives (a popular euphemism in this industry) – I would not buy a stock that was nearly guaranteed to go down in value for the next 12 months – the only difference with a house is that it can be a home, and there is always value in that (even if it isn’t always directly monetary).

Check out this screen shot:

What you’re looking at (sorry it’s so small) is an area that is maybe 3/4 of a mile square. This is in Oceanside -the 76 going right through the middle of some neighborhoods. Everyone one of those flags is a property that is either NOD, NTS or REO. In that relatively small area – there are 206 homes that are in some stage of foreclosure. Good luck trying to sell your house in this area … you’re competing with people that are just walking away from their homes or banks who need to get their property sold ASAP. Not all of these homes may be for sale … on the other hand, these images don’t reflect homes that are for sale but aren’t in distress (some stage of foreclosure).

Below is another example … this frame catches what is most of San Elijo Hills in San Marcos:

This depicts another 200+ homes in trouble in a relatively small area.

In both of these cases the majority of the homes are quite new (less than 5 years old) and they’re not inexpensive, run-down, dumps … a photo of what these homes typically look like:

Hope this helps. Stats from foreclosureradar.com and sandicor’s MLS