Palos Verdes Foreclosures Report updated for 1/16/2014

California single-family home and condominium sales gained 1.4 percent in December from November, and were down 18.4 percent from a year ago. Yet we all know that “Real Estate is all LOCAL!” so what’s going on with the Palos Verdes Foreclosures. Follow this link to get to the full details and when you scroll down a bit past the charts that are displayed there, you will see an easy to use SpatialMatch LifeStyle Finder Palos Verdes Homes Search map

that is already filtered to display the “distressed” Palos Verdes homes for sale as well as distressed sales throughout the South Bay To get a clearer picture of current real estate sales trends and to eliminate seasonal factors, we compare December 2013 property sales to December sales in prior years. Dividing sales into their distressed and non-distressed components, non-distressed sales were up 10.3 percent, but a 54.5 percent decline in non-distressed property sales triggered an 18.4 percent decline in overall year-over-year sales. And again, while these facts are important, how do they compare with what’s happening with Palos Verdes Foreclosures?  

Despite December’s sizeable year-over-year decline in distressed property sales, they still accounted for 24.6 percent of total sales, which remains historically high. More importantly, distressed property sales, as a percent of total sales, are much higher in counties away from the coastal areas. Of the 26 largest counties, the eight counties with the highest percentage of distressed property sales – Fresno, Kern, Merced, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, Solano, Stanislaus and Tulare – are in non-coastal areas. In those counties, distressed property sales represented more than 30 percent of sales; Merced County was highest at 37.8 percent. Were there fewer Palos Verdes Foreclosures? The steady rise in home prices since January 2012 has helped thousands of previously underwater homeowners in California shift to positive-equity status, so they can refinance or sell their homes.

Palos Verdes Foreclosures

In December, the number of homeowners with more than 10 percent equity in their homes was nearly unchanged; in the past five months that number has increased by 4.1 percent, or approximately 200,000. Since August, the number of homeowners who are moderately to severely underwater has fallen by 12.8 percent, or approximately 160,000.

Other than my Palos Verdes Foreclosures update page, you will find other tools to measure the price trends for Palos Verdes homes in other sections of my website; explore the tabs on the home page or use the CONTACT popup to get a personalized price trend chart for your neighborhood. Despite the improvement, large numbers of underwater homeowners remain a drag on the California real estate market. In December, nearly 1.4 million (16 percent) of California’s 8.6 million homeowners were underwater while nearly 420,000 (4.8 percent) were barely above water (less than 10 percent equity in their homes). Since costs to resell a home are as much as 10 percent of a home’s sale price, these homeowners are effectively underwater. All told, 20.8 percent of homeowners (approximately 1.8 million) are underwater or barely above water and effectively shut out of the California real estate market. Several of California’s largest counties continue to struggle with much higher levels of negative equity. In Fresno, Kern, Merced, San Bernardino, San Joaquin, Solano, Stanislaus and Tulare counties, 25 to 31 percent of homeowners are moderately to severely underwater.

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With the Palos Verdes homes market improving, I’m getting questions from my clients about Palos Verdes foreclosures.  Are there still opportunities here?  What is this “Shadow Inventory”?  How will that effect the real estate market?

Shadow inventory, in case you don’t already know, is that supply of homes taken back in foreclosure by banks but not yet on the market.  The fear has always been that if banks were to release that inventory all at one time, then that supply would flood the market causing prices to fall.

There are two reasons why this is not going to happen.  The National Association of Realtors just published an article in which they document that the “Shadow Inventory Plummets to Lowest Level in 6 Years”

While the National Association of Realtors speaks toward the national market and as I’ve written before, there is no such thing as a “national market” as the adage remains true and second in importance to the age old adage of “Location, Location, Location” … “Real Estate is ALL Local!”.

Reason #1:  There is no huge supply of shadow inventory in Palos Verdes!

Reason # 2: We have unprecedented low supplies of homes for sale in general

 Palos Verdes Foreclosures – Where?

What with these two factors, there is no way the near insignificant amount of shadow inventory of Palos Verdes homes will have any effect whatsoever on Palos Verdes home prices If you would like more information on searching for Palos Verdes foreclosures you can use this website to gain free access to a service that I pay for as part of my customer service. You can use this site to search for all Palos Verdes homes for sale, including Palos Verdes foreclosures that are listed for sale now (less than a handful).

If you’re focus is ONLY on Palos Verdes foreclosures or Palos Verdes Distressed property, I’ve built this search map for you: (if you’re looking at a blog site where you’re reading this and the Palos Verdes Distressed Homes For Sale map is not displayed, following this link to get to the ORIGINAL CONTENT for this article: http://www.homeispalosverdes.com/palos-verdes-foreclosures-shadow-inventory/

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Palos Verdes Open Houses Guide with dates, times and more information. The guide is found by scrolling down, and you will find the preliminary information useful too. Make sure to play the video to maximize what you can get out of the guide.

Here’s the thing with Palos Verdes open houses. Palos Verdes open houses are divided into two categories – “Brokers Open Houses” and “Public Open Houses”. Theoretically, the Palos Verdes Open Houses that are for Brokers, certainly are there for brokers to preview new and existing Palos Verdes homes for sale, but the public is always welcome. Don’t be intimidated just because the Palos Verdes Open Houses you want to see are designated as Brokers Open Houses.

Palos Verdes Open Houses Guide – How to Use

Watch the video below to see exactly how to use this free service. And then before wasting gas to drive around, go back to my home page, scroll down a bit to the Spatial Match Lifestyle homes search map and as the directions show in the video, enter the street name in the keywords section to look at the details of any particular home that you see as an open house.

I hope you like this utility. It works fairly well. Of course if there is more information on any particular home or group of homes that you would like, I’m just a phone call, text or email away. And obviously, I would be happy to make an appointment with you to show you personally any home whether or not on the open house list, that you find intriguing.

Oh, one more thing, the chart above is not live. There’s a problem with the widget and I hope to have that fixed in short order. However, if you were to click the chart, it will take you to a different website where you can see the dynamics in the market place. Pay close attention to the “Market Action Index”. What is that? Shoot me an email and I will explain.

To use the guide, please go to this website:

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Original Content for Palos Verdes Foreclosures Report

George Fotion