March numbers fall from February, triple first quarter '07
- UNION-TRIBUNE, April 23, 2008
By Lori Weisberg
and Roger Showley
Lenders took back the homes of struggling San Diego County homeowners in record numbers during the first quarter, a trend that real estate analysts suspect is likely to continue through much of the year.
While the number of foreclosures last month dipped more than 20 percent compared with February, the rate of mortgage failures during the last quarter more than tripled compared with a year earlier, rising from 1,182 to 3,666, according to a report released yesterday by DataQuick Information Systems.
For the month of March, foreclosures totaled 1,045, down from 1,316 in February. But a one-month decline, say analysts, is not enough to predict what lies ahead for San Diego's volatile real estate market.
“There are two different scenarios here,” said DataQuick analyst John Karevoll. “Scenario one is that default activity is a nasty case of indigestion that has to be digested, and once it's digested, the market will re-balance itself. If that's the case, we have two more quarters of increases in default activity, then we'll level off and start to decline next year.
“Scenario number two is where we factor in the recession. Then the default activity will start to migrate from this pool of at-risk home loans into the more mainstream mortgages.”
University of California San Diego economist James Hamilton agreed that hard times likely lie ahead before conditions begin to improve.
“I think it's too early to break out the champagne, because I think there is still potential for significant, further declines in prices, and that will put a whole new set of people into potential problems,” he said.
The continued surge in foreclosures can be largely traced to the high number of subprime loans made to buyers at a time when housing prices were rising. Once values started to decline, cash-strapped homeowners faced with ballooning monthly payments found themselves unable to refinance their loans and began defaulting on monthly payments.
Notices of default, the first step in the foreclosure process, last quarter climbed 128 percent, compared with a year earlier, rising to 8,975 from 3,931, DataQuick reported.
Today's pace of foreclosures and default notices easily outpaces that of the early 1990s when San Diego County was in the midst of a recession.
DataQuick noted that statewide, most of the loans that went into default last quarter originated between August 2005 and October 2006. But fewer homeowners, it found, are holding onto their homes once they start missing mortgage payments. Just 32 percent are avoiding foreclosure, compared with 52 percent a year ago, DataQuick estimates.
According to DataQuick statistics, the greatest concentration of foreclosures last quarter was in the eastern area of Chula Vista, home to a large number of planned communities that have attracted many first-time buyers. Closer to the border, San Ysidro also had a high proportion of mortgage failures.
While the number of foreclosures per 1,000 homes ranged from 12 to 15 in those communities during the last quarter, that is still considerably less than what is seen in neighborhoods in California's Central Valley and parts of Riverside County, which have been especially hard hit, Karevoll said.
