70% of July home sales in Las Vegas were foreclosures

 

If you missed it over the weekend, Latimes.com had a report on the financial woes of those living in Las Vegas.

Here's a look at the DataQuick figures from July, the latest month for which statistics are available.

Las Vegas home sales rose above a year ago for the 11th consecutive month in July as investors and first-time buyers -- including many making "cash" deals -- continued to target lower-cost, post-foreclosure properties. The overall median sale price fell nearly 4 percent from June, marking a low point for the decade and ending a brief period in which that price gauge and others had held steady, a real estate information service reported.

Nearly 70 percent of the Las Vegas-area houses and condos that resold in July were foreclosure resales, meaning those homes had been foreclosed on in the prior 12 months. That was the same as in June but up from 62.5 percent in July 2008. Foreclosure resales peaked in April at 73.7 percent of total resales, according to MDA DataQuick of San Diego. The firm tracks real estate trends nationally via public property records.

First-timers and investors appear to be the ones snatching these homes up. More details are at the DataQuick website. That 70% in Las Vegas compares with 43% in the Southern California.

Last month 43.4 percent of the Southland houses and condos that resold had been foreclosed on in the prior year – the lowest level since June 2008. July’s foreclosure resales figure was down from 45.3 percent in June and from a peak 56.7 percent in February 2009.

-- Lauren Beale

Thoughts? Comments?

Photo: Craig Walsh moved to Las Vegas from Orange County in 2004 and bought a $170,000 house. Now his work as a union carpenter has dried up. Credit: Brian Vander Brug / Los Angeles Times

 

 

Foreclosure bumper crop for California in 2008

California mortgage defaults and foreclosure sales shot up 131% in 2008 over the previous year, according to real estate data provider Default Research Inc. and reported by Bloomberg News on Tuesday.

The jump accompanied steep home price declines. The latest statistics from MDA DataQuick put the statewide median home price paid at $258,000 in November, a 37.7% nosedive from $414,000 for November a year ago.
   
From Bloomberg:

The three California counties with the highest number of foreclosures were Los Angeles, with 122,408 last year, followed by Riverside, with 82,072, and San Bernardino, with 64,144, Default Research said.

Once again, Southern California leads the way.

So will 2009 foreclosures top 2008's? Serdar Bankaci, founder of the Mt. Pleasant, Pa., foreclosure tracking firm, is quoted at Jon Lansner's O.C. Register blog as saying they "expect to see foreclosure activity continue through the first two quarters of 2009" but improving by the third quarter.

Seems optimistic to me. What about all those Alt-A and option ARMs that have yet to adjust?

-- Lauren Beale

Thoughts? Comments?

Photo: A home in the El Sereno area of Los Angeles. Credit: Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times

Is the high-end immune? Maybe, maybe not

     Whether expensive homes in prestigious areas will escape the housing crash remains a hotly debated topic. I hear from many readers (and see some examples where I live) of houses still selling, sometimes quickly, and sometimes for prices higher than the owners paid just a couple of years ago.

      Yet economists I interview contend prices at the high end are just sticky -- they take longer to fall, but do so eventually. Holdout sellers at some point cave in, raising supply, and trade-up buyers from other areas don't have as much money to buy in the pricier neighborhoods, squeezing demand.

     John Karevoll at DataQuick Information Systems has provided a breakdown of Southern California June home sales that shows the top end is falling as well.

   The median price for the top tenth of homes sold in June was $900,000, down from $1,129,500 the same month a year ago. That's a 20% drop. Last June was the price peak for that market segment, according to DataQuick.

   The bottom tenth of homes sold fared worse, with a 41% drop in the median sales price. 

  But the June decline in the top tenth shows a reversal from last summer. In June 2007, the median sales price for that tier was UP 3%. Last June, prices in the bottom tenth had fallen 11% from the previous year.

   So the top is sliding. Or is it ? The June median sales price was actually UP from the May median for the tier of $875,000, with roughly the same number of transactions. A one-month bump may not mean much, of course. A few more months of data will give us a better picture.

--Peter Y. Hong, Times staff writer

Photo: Bob Grieser / Los Angeles Times

Comments? Questions? Email peter.hong@latimes.com