I pretty much trust my own street smarts over anything that is reported by NAR and other associated organizations.
The past 6 months have, for me, been a crash course of how the industry really deals with distress. I have learned a great deal and anticipate that I will learn more. Over the past few months I have seen that both short sales and REO’s alike do indeed sit on offers. I would anticipate that in the case for short sales, the lack of response time is clearly due to staff shortages and a simple lack of motivation to take an official hit on the books.
Sellers may not be the only ones in denial eh? The investors know the hits are going to be made but much like the person who doesn’t like to look at thier etrade account after a bad run at the market, the investors are in no hurry to reconcile the values of thier shrinking investments. (This is all speculative)
Getting back to my point… I think that I have seen a bit of a surge in response times in the past 2 weeks from lenders regarding short sales and REO’s that I have been involved in. Maybe it is the fact they are just getting off the schnied or perhaps they are being big boys now and sucking it up. I will not be surprised at all to see a bit more of a surge in volume, with regards to lower end distressed properties here in town…
Over the past few weeks I have seen many a short and an reo go pending in both the central SD area and the south bay. Many of these were on the market for a few months. They did not all just now receive offers and go pending.
In no way do I attribute any of this activity to be a harbinger to the bottom. I feel it may be a combination of year end cleaning by the lenders but moreover a simple illustration of the pipeline finally starting to churn out results. I am still sticking to my position of this depreciation cycle being no different temporally then the prior, that we are still in year 2 and heading to 3, and that we will see cyclical rallies within the secular downtrend.
