Merced County Foreclosure Statistics Go Through The Roof

April 7th, 2008

Merced ranks fourth in the latest foreclosure rankings by RealtyTrac, a real estate research firm. It closely follows Stanislaus County at number three, preceded by Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla., which heads the list, and Stockton, which was at number two.

With a population of just 246,000 people, Merced as a county also took part in the real estate boom that transformed the nation over the last few years, and developments started coming up on reclaimed farmland as well. A Democrat from Merced, Rep. Dennis Cardoza says that, property prices have fallen by as much as 50 percent in towns like Atwater! “The impact on these small towns and cities is huge,” Cardoza said. “In my district, I believe we are already in a recession” he adds.

Merced is definitely no stranger to foreclosures, and ‘to be foreclosed’ signs litter the laws here, as do vacant homes with overgrown porches, and graffiti on boarded up windows. You don’t need to be an expert in rural real estate to see that foreclosures have hit the Merced belt hard, especially towns like Planada.

Homes that were being constructed during the boom but not completed were being sold in a development here for $400,000 three years earlier during the boom. Now, they are but vacant skeletons that are not finding buyers at half the price.

“I’ve lived here 50 years and I’ve never seen anything like it,” said John Pedrozo, a Merced County supervisor who represents Planada, and who grew up on a dairy farm. “Businesses are closing, people going bankrupt. And the empty houses are vandalized.” According to him, vacant homes were being trashed and used for wild weekend parties by the youth looking for free places to host such events.

In smaller towns, even a couple of foreclosures are well noticed, unlike big cities, he added. “It’s not just that property values go down,” he said. “But also that people lose their neighbors and their community.”

Adjoining counties face a similar situation. In the other three counties mentioned earlier that comprise the top three on the foreclosure list, RealtyTrac reported that foreclosure proceedings were begun on over 3101 properties, and almost 1,300 homes have already been repossessed in February. There was a foreclosure filing for a home in every hundred homes here in these three counties as compared to the country average of one foreclosure filing for every 557 homes across the nation.