No End in Sight for California Foreclosure Mess March Sees Record Levels of California Foreclosure Filings

Discovery Bay, CA (PRWEB) April 16, 2008

ForeclosureRadar (http://www.foreclosureradar.com), the only website that tracks every California foreclosure with daily auction updates; today issued it's California Foreclosure Report. March data indicates California's foreclosure crisis is accelerating and suggests that the normalization of the state's real estate market is still far from complete.

High-level findings include:

• Notices of Default - the first step in California's foreclosure process - jumped 14.3 percent during March, reaching a record high of 42,704. These new entries into the foreclosure pipeline will produce a jump in foreclosure sales and bank owned (REO) properties for months to come.
• Notices of Trustee Sale, which are issued approximately 3 months following a Notice of Default, jumped 47.9 percent in March setting a record high of 27,571 filings.
• Foreclosure sales at auction declined 6.5 percent in March to 15,833 with a combined loan value of $6.87 Billion. Lender inventories continue to swell as they failed to sell 97.7 percent of these properties despite offering an average discount of 21 percent off of loan value.

"Unfortunately, the foreclosure crisis in California is still deepening" said Sean O'Toole, founder of ForeclosureRadar. "The record jump in defaults last December are just now showing up in early April foreclosure sales, and the new record level of defaults this month won't begin to appear at auction until July."

Continues O'Toole, "We see the housing pain in California continuing through the end of this year, as the market shakes off the effects of the credit mess and rampant overbuilding. As devastating as this may be, we do think that the end result - greater housing affordability for the average Californian, using conventional loan products - will benefit consumers and the housing industry alike.

The largest discounts offered at auction were available in Merced County (32 percent off loan value on average), San Joaquin County (31 percent), and Monterey County (29 percent). Lenders offering the deepest discounts included Wilshire Credit Corp. (43.1 percent on average), World Savings (32.8 percent) and Downey Savings and Loan (30.4 percent).

Properties are sold, on average, 145 days after the Notice of Default is recorded, up 13 days from March 2007. Total time to foreclosure can vary by Lender, for example, World Savings takes an average of 158 days from Notice of Default to sale at auction, while Indymac completes the foreclosure process in just 121 days on average.

See Graph of Statewide Trends

See Table of County Foreclosure Activity

California Foreclosure Report Methodology
Rankings are based on population per foreclosure sale. NOD indicates the number of Notices of Default that were filed at the county, and NTS indicates filed Notices of Trustee Sale. Sales indicates the number of properties sold at foreclosure auction, including those "sold" back to the lender. Percentage changes are based on monthly Sales. The data presented by ForeclosureRadar is based on county records and individual sales results from daily foreclosure auctions throughout the state - not estimates or projections.

About ForeclosureRadar.com
ForeclosureRadar is the only web site that tracksevery foreclosure in California with daily updates on all foreclosure auctions. ForeclosureRadarfeatures unprecedented tools to search, manage, track and analyze preforeclosure, foreclosure auction, short sale and bank owned real estate. The web site was launched in May 2007 by Sean O'Toole, who spent 15 years building and launching software companies before entering the foreclosure business in 2002 where he has successfully bought and sold more than 150 foreclosure properties. ForeclosureRadar is an indispensable resource for real estate agents, brokers, lenders, investors, mortgage brokers, attorneys and other real estate professionals specializing in the California real estate market.

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