Hi Gary –

The most accurate way is to simply search the tax roll to see the owner. However this is quite tedious and time consuming although Perry Chase did say he was going to be formulating this project in a previous thread!

Anyways the MLS doesn’t have a clear cut way to do this. One can do a text search on various fields in the remarks or confidential remarks but that will not be totally accurate. It is very useful to track the trends as sdrealtor has done.

The best thing to do would be to create a script that would parse through the database of tax rolls for all active listings. Definitely a great project for a software engineer.

The bottom line is that the countywide numbers that sdr logs in the short sale monitor thread indicate that the percentage of short sales is growing countywide. Not only that, the percentage as a whole of the active inventory is growing as well. I would surmise that in areas like El Cajon the percentages of shorts exceed the countywide ratios fairly substantially.

My opinion is that this trend will continue. Don’t be surprised if those under 200k drop to the 150k and lower within a year or less.

SD Realtor

Nice synopsis SD R. The short sale monitor was never intended to truly measure the number of short sales but rather as a means of tracking distress in the marketplace. Based upon the data I have tracked thus far distress has grown faster than total inventory. Currently distress sales are growing while total inventory looks to have peaked already. That is a very important point to reach IMO. If distress sales grow and inventory decreases the impact of these these distress sales on the greater market will increase.

Sorry, Gary. No.

According to yesterday’s NY Times, ARMs are going to peak this October. Look for more distress all Fall.

“The peak month for the resetting of mortgages will come this October, according to Credit Suisse, when more than $50 billion in mortgages will switch to a new rate for the first time. The level will remain above $30 billion a month through September 2008. In all, the interest rates on about $1 trillion worth of mortgages, or 12 percent of the nation’s total, will reset for the first time this year or next. A couple of years ago, by comparison, only a marginal amount of mortgage debt — a few billion dollars — was resetting each month.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/business/01leonhardt.html?em&ex=1186200000&en=270cbb086425e0e3&ei=5087

Good article. A bit optimistic (“ARM holders can just refinance or sell their houses”) but illustrating the issues nonetheless. Basically gets the data from the Credit Suisse report.

Gary, don’t use the less-than or greater-than symbols in your posts. Your posts aren’t being cut off, but everything after one of those symbols is being interpreted as html.

I’m curious, if the ARMs peak in October as projected, won’t it take a few months for any homeowner’s distress related to the higher payments to be felt in the marketplace? Let’s say a payment increases by 10 or 20 percent in October, Mr & Mrs FB Homeowner struggle for a couple of months or so to make the payment, then after three to six months realize they are fighting a losing battle and give up the ship. Then comes the several month period before they get the NOD, and several months after that for the NOT sale. So it could be well into next year, maybe fall of 2008, before the October resets are of any consequence on home prices, which we are all anxiously waiting to fall. Correct me if I’m wrong.