As a short sale listing expert, I've tracked the number of foreclosures, meaning both short sales and bank owned homes (REOs) in the South Bay for the past few years. It wasn't long ago that each month there would be consistently over 100 short sale homes listed in Torrance alone. That certainly isn't the case any longer. As of April 10th 2013 only 29 short sales were on the market in the cities of Lawndale, Gardena, Manhattan Beach, Redondo, Hermosa, Palos Verdes, El Segundo, San Pedro and Torrance combined. The chart above shows the number of active short sale listings, pending escrows and sold homes for each month in the cities mentioned above. The light green bar shows the active listings, dark green shows sold homes with the red line showing the pending or "in escrow" homes.
Keith, Thanks for the graph. How many standard sales are on the market? Do you think there is "shadow" inventory waiting to be released?
Hi Keith, the question maybe, will we see more short sales if loan mods do not work out? I do not think prices will appreciate to the levels that most underwater homeowners would need them to get to for an equity sale, at least in my local area. I do think we will see more REO's, however not in the quantity of numbers we saw in the past few years.
Keith - The market improving more non-distress homeowners are placing their homes in the market. Thanks for an educational blog.
Mike: At the moment there are 577 homes for sale in the same cities which down 50% from April of 2012. Inventory is down across the board, but due to the demand for the area (near the beach) we never quite felt the same impact of short sales that other areas did.
Kathy: Great point. Although our market retained value very well compared with other areas there are still many owners that are very unlikely to get back to break even and will remain underwater. I don't envision any waves of foreclosures in the future for us unless we're getting into another bubble. With the way this market is going it might be possible. I actually just wrote a post on that as well. http://redondobeachrealestatehomes.com/oh-this-crazy-market-how-home-prices-are-getting-out-of-control/
John: I hope more sellers start putting their homes on the market.....not sure what many sellers are waiting for. Incredible market at the moment dramatically in favor of the sellers.
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