CALIFORNIA FORCLOSURES INCREASE 800%
April 18th, 2007Via: Los Angeles Times:
Nearly 900 Californians a week are losing their homes because they can’t afford to pay the mortgage — up from about 100 a week a year ago — providing fresh evidence that the housing market’s troubles are nowhere near over.
The surge is raising concerns that home prices will soon suffer as a result. The 11,033 foreclosures in the first three months of the year represent an 800% increase over the same period a year earlier.
In addition, 46,760 homeowners were sent default notices in the first quarter, DataQuick Information Systems reported Monday. A default notice is a warning from a lender to catch up on payments immediately or face eviction.
Foreclosures and default warnings are at their highest points in nearly a decade, the La Jolla-based real estate data tracker said.
So far, the effect on home values has been muted. But as the number of move-outs, evictions and forced sales continue to increase, some economists say they will soon start to push prices down.
First to fall will be the low-income communities where marginal loans proliferated, they say. The trend will spread like a virus to more affluent neighborhoods.
The bankers *are* the Corporati: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/business/18scotus.html?ex=1334548800&en=bd8bec73a356ec92
Kevin, I don’t suppose you know what the foreclosure rates are in other areas of the world? I’m wondering if other areas are being affected by the crashing market here in the U.S.
Having departed the states from a patch of the planet only a few dusty miles up the coast of Kevin & Bex, I must say that I ccntinue to be relieved to this very day that we didn’t sink ourselves into a long-term property in the years before we decided to bail.
We were coming awfully close, then things changed in 2001 and my German wife (who did study her history) came eventually to agree with my depleted view of future prospects in the U.S., economically and poltically speaking.
These days we’re also developing other talents with tangible results, especially of the edible variety. Our own little SCOBY colony, the whole raw milk ethos, lacto-fermented and living foods. Proper space for livestock beyond the current chicken population is in the works.
When I think about the debt load, even after dropping a good chunk of change down, was still a load if you prefer the coast. Cross a particular proximal street and suddenly prices climb rapidly. We didn’t want to leave the coast, but to own their outside of a lucrative (read: never there anyway) career choice or the irrepressible LA-area “gonna be a star” gleam in so many eyes there, required a large leap of faith, as it were.
Today, I’m tending forest and planting walnut trees. Killed an afternoon planting Dahlias yesterday. Purely decorative and not all that edible, but the big front gardens look great all through the summer. Buy flowers, are you joking?
When I think back to all the various parts of the greater LA basin, seen from the driver’s seat of our repatriated Cabriolet, I recall the Rim highways and canyons and all of the central California coast fondly. We were considering paying the piper a sum to secure a spot.
Unladen at present, with forest and garden and orchard and property to tend, and the place seems a million miles away now. Like a different planet.
But…I thought that they said today with the record DOW that the foreclosures arent having any effect…:P
STOP BUYING AND STOP CHARGING!!!
Now we are talking…
http://www.womensgroup.org/HOW-TO-STOP-THE-NEW-WORLD-ORDER.htm
“Between higher interest rates, growing consumer debt spurred on by lower interest rates, and $75bbl. oil, Wall Street changed its tune. In fact they did a little dance. Here and there we have been told that the housing market is slowing down. Some of America’s largest homebuilders now have one year’s supply of new homes. First Toll Brothers, now KB Homes. The housing markets in California, Nevada and Florida have slowed tremendously in light of higher mortgage rates and the Fed’s determination to fight the same inflation they have created.”
And there’ll be many more in the not-so-distant future:
http://www.itulip.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1245