Foreclosures in San Diego County

There's a lot of talk these days about foreclosures, reos, and defaults. In an effort to answer our client's questions about what was going on in the market, we implemented Foreclosure maps, where we take the current data and plot it on the map. This allows our clients (and us) to visually see where the foreclosures are occurring to better understand the real estate market. Here's the kind of map that I'm talking about:

Note: The numbers on the pushpins show how many bedrooms for the particular property.

This map is the current (as of this writing) trustee sale map (i.e., properties scheduled for sale). As soon as you see this data displayed on the map, one thing becomes immediately evident. Notice the lack of trustee sale property along the coastal area. There are a handful, but only a handful. Compare that to the inland areas of San Diego county where the foreclosures are, by comparison, prolific.

This is important for people to see who may think that they can pick up a distressed property for pennies in Del Mar or La Jolla or elsewhere along the coast. As you can see, such properties are simply far and few between. Usually the owners of such properties have assets, and if they do get into trouble, they have the time to sell the property. Also, because the cost of the properties is so much higher, usually there is equity in the home due to a downpayment, which means that it is in the homeowner's interest to sell the property to recoup as much of the downpayment as possible (as opposed to letting the bank sell it at wholesale and the homeowner recovers nothing).

On the other hand, it is the inland, less expensive properties where buyers financed these homes at 90%, 95%, or 100%. Given the recent reduction in value, those buyers cannot profit from the sale and often have less reserves and cannot wait for a sale. Hence the fact that the bank has issued a trustee sale.

I hope this has been helpful to see what is going on in San Diego County. If you want to see the complete set of distressed property maps, just visit our Encinitas and Carlsbad Distressed Property Page.

Thanks for visiting. Call me at 760-942-4242 if you have any questions.

Margaret Hokkanen