Did you guys go to the courthouse lately? Yesterday, I went to the El Cajon courthouse for a small matter and in the front lobby there’s a sign pointing to where the foreclosure documents are. There’s a table setup with stacks of foreclosure auction paperwork. A couple of years ago, who’d have thought that we’d come to this? Well, many of us here on Piggington knew that it’d only be a matter of time.

Hmm, PC, that to me is bad. Not bad as in there are a lot of foreclosure, bad as in the next boom market will be people thinking they’re getting rich buying foreclosures.

I’d guess that table is set up because they have so many people coming in to get the details on the foreclosures looking for properties.

Like someone else posted a while back, when they got closer to the bottom in the early 90s, there’d be 5 people at the auction with a 100 properties to go through.

Like the REDC auction, at the moment, there’s 1200 people combing through the 300 foreclosures.

Could the whole home debacle actual improve the economy in some ways? Forcing these home owners to move into rental’s that will be considerably cheaper and therefore opening up more of their income to be spent on other things? Not to mention the declining home prices will lower mortgage payments for people like myself so then I will have more leftover to save/spend (me being more of a saver then a spender).

who knows, but “buying a foreclosure” seems to be the new buzz phrase at work lately

Forcing these home owners to move into rental’s that will be considerably cheaper and therefore opening up more of their income to be spent on other things? Not to mention the declining home prices will lower mortgage

I don’t think so. Basically a large part of the reason prices are so high is that the buyers were in effect living cheaper than rent. The Neg-AM loans and ultra-low teaser 1 year ARMs essentially had people buying large houses with a money payment that was less than rent.

On top of it, they did negative savings and tapped their equity to increase spending above their income level.

What I see happening is a large wave of people getting moved out of their SFRs and into a smaller cruddier rental that actually costs them more per month than they’re use to paying for the home. Not because rents are high, but because the credit bubble allowed them to refi so easily into a temporary low payment.

I have a feeling the bitter renters the bulls like to call housing bulls will really show up in one to two years, when over extended prior “owners” take a giant step backwards in their perceived quality of living and potentially pay more per month for it and have less disposable cash.

very insightful, no_such_reality. I think that you’re on to something. Most owner or renters only care about cash flow — that is fitting the monthly payments into their budget.

It seems to me that the majority of recent buyers had mortgages that were higher than the place that they came from or than the actual market rental value of the house/condo they purchased.Many people spent over their heads more than you will ever believe. No reasonable landlord would have rented to a huge percentage of these people at the debt to income ratios they were achieving with stated income and fudged loans.
Many loans were package deals with seconds on top at a higher rate…like 10%. Recall how many of these defaults are happening before the reset? Condos had homeowners fees and property tax at least half of fair rental value. Yes there are instances in single family homes where the teaser rates worked out lower and some builders were paying the first six months mortgage and such.In General Spending was artificially high because of MEW not increased cash flow due to teaser rates. That spending has come to a screeching halt. I don’t see where spending comes from in the near future at all.