In Fontana, foreclosure discounts hit 50%

Every few weeks I put together a photo gallery of foreclosed houses for sale, and I just put up another one at LATimes.com -- click here to see 16 foreclosed houses from Glendale to Redondo Beach.

Worth noting: this is the fifth such collection of listings I've put together, and for the first time, it includes houses listed at less than half of their peak sales price. The home pictured, a 4-bedroom in Fontana, sold for $385,000 in December of 2006 and is now listed at $189,900 -- a discount of 50.7%.

For what it's worth, here are links to the previous collections of listings, with the range of discounts from peak sales price in each collection, and the median discount. (I know, this is not a statistically valid sample, but I enjoy playing with numbers. Humor me.)

February 25: Discounts ranged from 14.8% to 41.0%; Median discount: 19.0%
March 6: Discounts ranged from 6.7% to 38.0%; Median discount: 23.9%
April 17: Discounts ranged from 13.5% to  45.1%; Median discount: 28.8%
May 9: Discounts ranged from 7.1% to 44.3%; Median discount: 32.9%
July 9: Discounts ranged from 10.8% to 51.0%; Median discount:  30.9%

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com
Photo Credit: Baldwin Real Estate Services

Comments

[Laker]

Check out house number 5, 5858 6th Ave. Los Angeles 90043
All windows have bars, looks like jail to be in the middle of a serious ghetto...and the listing agent says it is a cool house???
cool for what? getting shot? $285,000? Make it $85,000 for that cool house!

[CD]

I'll take all 16 of them right now for an average of 50K each that 800K total !!!!! I am feeling very generous today.

[xtine]

Don't I remember this bad boy from a few months back?

2117 W. Avenue 33, Los Angeles 90065

I believe everyone thought it was in a slum and a terrible house (I secretly thought it was kind of cute...)

[ice weasel]

It's funny, on one side you have folks like the ones Laker is making light of putting bars on their windows. It's a "ghetto" he says. I'm thinking that word doesn't mean what he thinks it means. I thinking Laker aught to just say what Laker means.

That said, if you see a $1M home in a "nice" neighborhood and the listing says the home has a "complete home security system with keypad entry, motion sensors, all the windows have been sensored costing $15K" is the first thing you think, "Hey, I'm gonna get shot if I live in this neighborhood."?

The Lake Elsinore still has a nice long fall ahead of it. I think the Avenue home is encouraging. It's a decent enough neighborhood and the price is getting to the point where I might consider describing it as reasonable. The Pasadena home is in a nice area but still grossly over priced (but if you had to bite at these prices, that might be my choice). The Glendale home is actually La Crescenta. Too bad about the 210 freeway only 100 feet away (well, and the white rock in the front yard, mmmm, curb appeal).

[CD]

It does not matter if the market is getting closer to what some believe "it should be" that it is " getting closer to"
or " encouraging", the stock market is plunging down, we are about to enter a U shape recession and all bets are off.
There is no more market to talk about, no price "guideline"
given by realtards, it's back to square one. 50%off will be the norm. 50% off will be the starting price. A shack is now officially just a shack.
Calculated risk has great interviews today.

[E]

Not impressed Pete.

Try Compton and Watts.

I've seen 70% off sales there.

[Laker]

ice weasel,
I know what a ghetto is if you refer to WWII ghettos, concentration camps and mass murder facilities.
Put that a side, these slums with bars on the windows is an example of a place no plain Joe would like to live at.

Also, xtine is correct the 2117 W. Avenue 33, Los Angeles 90065 appeared on the blog couple of months ago. It is also in a very poor area. My problem with that place is that based on the garage door on street level, and the stairs up to the house. I think that you have a good chance of getting shot in the morning or evening when getting into out of the car.
The minimum i would expect from such shack in crack town is to be able to sneak into the car strait from the house, open the garage door and speed out fast before the bullets come at you...
LOL>....

[T. Rogers]

Weasal and Laker's conversation about what is and is not a 'ghetto' caught my attention. I understand when people want to call certain neighborhoods ghetto. The thing is most neighborhoods in LA County are borderline ghetto. People slam Compton or East L.A., but unless you are living on the Westside or one the coastal communities you are not that far from being in a ghetto. And there are some Westside neighborhoods that are borderline. All of Santa Monica is not nice and trendy.

In Los Angeles making a few turns can take you from a 'nice' neighborhood to MS 13 territory real quick. So look out your window. Unless you live in Bel Air or Manhattan Beach (or the like) you are probably a stones throw from the ghetto. This is not to defend the so-called ghetto. This is to point the realty of what I see as I drive around L.A. everyday. MOST of L.A. is the ‘hood folks.

[shockg]

well there you have it Laker, we can all see with our own eyes the types of homes that are 50% off. Knock yourself out. Is this what you sold your home for?? LOL.

[E]

Laker...

shhhhhhhhh.

there's no such thing as a bad area.

They all gentrified...remember?

ROFLMFAO!

[It All Happens on the Margin]

The Elsinore / IE stuff has me confounded.

Reminds me of the horror stories in the midwest where they can't give a place away, and the copper in the walls is worth more than the dirt & structure.

Though I am hearing anecdotes that the market is moving at these prices, methinks this is a dead cat bounce.

We're now at < $100 per square foot in the IE. You can't build a place for that price. So the structure AND the dirt are worth less than the cost of the raw materials and labor.

As far as I can tell, the lesson is "you shouldn't have built it in the first place, Ms. Developer."

Big hurt in the IE. And we're not even

[JK]

When will the "safer" neighborhoods go on sale at 50% off? My guess is no time soon as most people are willing to pay the premium not to live in the "ghetto".

I won't even get started on what constitutes a "ghetto" neighborhood, but I'm willing to bet that most people want to live in a place where they can walk their dogs at night, shop in clean stores, send their children to good schools, sleep without earplugs and sit on their front porch in peace. That reality is slipping further and further away from the average American citizen. Thanks elected officials!

[mbob]

Hey, enough with the cats already.

Try a dead realtor bounce.

[puckhead]

E,

Name me one major city in the world where bad parts of town are not within close distance of the good parts. People make it seem like this is unique to SoCal. Take a walk in Manahattan. One minute you're walking along the Upper East Side with multi million dollar penthouses and the next thing you're in Harlem. I spent about 4 months working in Seattle, there's plenty of shady parts of Seattle you don't want to be in at night.

[Julia]

I'm with JK. You keep hearing about all these great foreclosure discounts, but they're usually in areas that no one wants to live. Homes in nice, safe areas with good schools are still going for really high prices.

It seems to me that developers built homes where it was convenient, and not where the average American would want to live. Ghetto housing isn't just in Compton or East LA. It's anywhere that people don't feel safe.

I only see things getting worse. I bet these cheap foreclosures get snapped up by investors and are turned into crappy rentals. And that will only exacerbate the situation. If you bought a home at the peak of the market, and now it's worth half, and you're neighborhood's going to crap, why would you fight to keep your house? I can see a lot of people walking away.

[Valley Observer]

So what? This just shows that 2006 pseudo-prices were not realistic, which we knew at the time, didn't we? Meanwhile, teardowns (valued as building sites) on the best streets in 90402 are still going for $2 mil and up.

[Nelcisco]

No JK, its slipping further and further from average citizen in LA, the rest of the country has a way to go yet

[Greg Weston]

50% price reductions are quite common here in San Diego, in fact I have dozens of examples listed on my blog. See the link below.

http://gweston.wordpress.com/category/
san-diego-housing-market/

[Enlightenment]

Large parts of the LA Metro area should dozed and burned during the next wild fire...you know which areas I'm talking about.

[canuck]

1150 S. Curson Ave., Los Angeles 90019 - I live a couple blocks away from this place. When other homes have been selling at high prices this place sat there. Why? Overpriced and poor detailing among other things, with low end finishing throughout. The owner or real estate agent was clearly delusional in their pricing. One thing that is stuck in my head, is that this is the only house where I have ever seen fake window sills! It actually had white colored aluminum or tin sills rather than wood - how cheap can you get? Small wonder this place can't be sold.

[PREFAB SPROUT]

Just thought I would inject some "rest of America" insight into your pics and posts.

The prices for your acceptable places ( 450K-650K) would buy you 2500-3500 sq ft 2-4 blocks from the ocean here in Myrtle Beach. For the same $185K the Fontana dump is asking you can get a new home--1500 sg ft hardee siding standing seam metal roof near a golf course. Needless to say all are near good schools.

As a former resident I agree with the poster who says that unless you can afford BH, Malibu, Pacific Palisades etc then you are always in some danger of rubbing shoulders with the gangster crowd. Hancock Park-Los Feliiz etc are not "safe" in the way the prices for those homes would indicate you should be.

LA and Manhattan are really twins in this area. Both have VERY high priced safe areas for the money is no object crowd. Everyone else has to take a chance. And "middle class" housing for the $100K a year couple? Don't make me laugh.

[sandiegan]

Wow.
Fugly houses from the beaches to Fontucky.
What's up with the house in Pasadena and all the sat dishes on the roof?
Is it some sort of satelite relay station?

[campechano]

50 % off of what? The peak? Give me a break!!!

These houses need to be sold at 85% off.

A nice house in a nice area should never ever exceed 250/sq ft.

[campechano]

one more thing...

did anybody see those --columns--- on the pasadena house? Wow...it's truly reminiscent of the old pasadena mansions of yore, ain't it?

hahahahahahahaha......

[fezco]

For you out-of-towners posting here: I figure you guys want to keep all the gangs here localized in LA. If we bulldoze or gentrify them all out, where will they go? Out of state to your neighborhoods perhaps.