Chase is one of the main culprits (example here) possessing a large stock of “shadow inventory” in CA, considering how many “portfolio” ARM loans they “inherited” from the now-defunct WAMU. They also purchased thousands of Alt A loans from large mortgage brokers/bankers such as Lending Tree and American Lending Network in recent years immediately after processing . . . for a discount, no doubt. They’re only “pushing back their expectations for a housing recovery” because of their trickle-into-the-market practice of filing their NOD’s and subsequent NOS’s in such a way that “not too much hits the market” in the same subdivision at the same time. They are creating their OWN artificial “trickle” until 2014 ON PURPOSE, to attempt to try to recover AS MUCH AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE from each and every REO by creating bidding wars for them, due to lack of inventory in most areas. Most of these REO’s were built in the last ten years and due to that particular “captive audience,” will have buyers lined up to bid as soon as they hit the market, one by one, while the rest of their “shadow properties” await their turn. Of course, their squatters benefit and buyers be damned! This is just my .02 on this thorny subject.
