San Diego County Witness a Decline in Foreclosures

December 2nd, 2008

San Diego County has witnessed a decline in its rate of home foreclosures in the month of October. There has been a decline of nearly 37 percent from what it was in September. According to the real estate experts, it won’t be right to comment that this decline means that the crisis in the housing market has been able to touch bottom. This decline may be due to the efforts made by the lenders for modifying the troubled loans. Apart from that another reason for this decline may be the enactment of Senate Bill 1137 that says that the lenders have to take further measures so that the borrowers can stay in their homes.

This bill that was signed in July was not put into effect until September 8. Analyst Andrew LePage has said that this decline in the rate of foreclosures may be something that won’t last for a long time. A majority of the loan modification programs aims at concentrating on bringing down the payments by lowering the rate of interest. It has been found that the foreclosure sales in October statewide have declined by 39 percent from a month ago. There were about 1,144 foreclosures in San Diego County in the last month. This is a decline of approximately 37 percent from September and also an increase of about 38 percent from October, 2007.

There were a total of about 1,112 default notices in the month of October. This shows a decline of about 8 percent from the month of September and about 47.5 percent from the month of October of 2007. The decline in the value of homes arising due to foreclosure although have made a large number of people homeless, but this is being enjoyed by the first time buyers as they could now purchase real estate at a much affordable price.

A spokesman for the California Mortgage Bankers Association, Dustin Hobbs said “It’s unclear whether we’ll see a meaningful, permanent reduction in foreclosures as a result of recent changes in the state’s foreclosure process and lenders’ efforts to modify more problem loans. One possibility is that all of those things combined will simply delay a lot of foreclosures, in which case we would see foreclosure filings spike in the months ahead.” Real estate expert Sean O’Toole has said that although modification is being done on home loans but it might not be capable of being sustained.