August 01,2006



Second-quarter foreclosure activity in the state rose at its fastest pace in at least 14 years, including a 98.9 percent jump in San Diego County, a real estate information service reported today.



Despite the surge in default notices over the same quarter last year, actual foreclosures remained below normal levels, according to La Jolla-based DataQuick Information Systems.



"This is an important trend to watch but doesn't strike us as ominous," said Marshall Prentice, president of DataQuick. "The increase was a statistical certainty because the number of defaults had fallen to such extreme lows. We would have to see defaults roughly double from today's level before they would begin to impact home values much."





According to DataQuick, lenders sent 20,752 default notices to California homeowners from April to June. That's a 10.5 percent increase over the previous quarter and a 67.2 percent jump over the same period last year. The year-over-year increase was the largest for any quarter since DataQuick began tracking defaults in 1992.



In San Diego County, lenders sent 1,778 default notices in the second quarter, a 98.9 percent jump over the same quarter of 2005, when 894 notices were sent.



Prentice said other factors influencing the default rate are the amount of equity people have in their properties, the type of mortgage and how long people have had the mortgage.



Only about 7 percent of homeowners who find themselves in default actually lose their homes to foreclosure, DataQuick reported.



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August 3, 2006

August 10,2006









NORTH COUNTY -- It may have been a torrid month as far as the weather was concerned, but July was ice-cold in the North County housing market.









Continuing a slowdown that has persisted throughout the year, sales of single-family houses last month plunged 31 percent from July 2005 and sales of condominiums fell 28 percent during the same time period, according to a report released Wednesday by the North San Diego County Association of Realtors.




Last month, the local housing market posted its second-worst performance of 2006, one eclipsed only by June's 37 percent year-over-year plunge in single-family home sales.









Real estate analysts said the drop isn't cause for alarm. They said the market is just settling down after its quick 2005 pace, and fewer people are buying because the investors are gone.









However, a San Diego economist who tracks trends in real estate and publishes a newsletter advising investors on when and when not to buy, said the decline is a clear indication that the housing market is entering a downturn.









"Prices have reached a point where they simply can't go any higher," said Robert Campbell, who publishes the online Campbell Real Estate Timing Letter. "We are on the down side of the cycle. This movie has replayed for the last 40 years. This shouldn't surprise anybody."









Market activity also fell sharply in July by another measure, the total dollar value of sales.









Brown said total money changing hands for single-family homes was $634,821,476, down almost 25 percent from the $839,877,471 that changed hands in July 2005.









In the condo market, a total of $103,455,116 changed hands, he said. The number represented a dip of 33 percent from the July 2005 total of $155,770,529.









When it came to the key market indicator of inventory, the number of single-family homes on the market swelled to 6,482 last month, the association report showed. Coupled with the 727 homes that sold, that meant North County had a nine-month supply of houses in July, up sharply from the six-month supply it had in March.









There is an even bigger glut of condos.









With 2,645 condos listed in North County in July and only 257 of them selling, the area had a 10-month supply of town houses and other owned shared-wall housing.









The median condo price fell 10 percent year over year to $359,000 in July, the report stated.









Meanwhile, single-family values continued to hold up ---- barely. Year over year, the median price edged up less than 2 percent, to $635,000 in July. That represented a decline from the all-time high of $650,000 a month earlier.






August 10, 2006

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