Question on the big attention-getting statement in the foreclosureradar report:
By looking at the number of foreclosures the banks have taken back and subtracting those that have since resold, we are able to show the number of foreclosures the banks have held as inventory over time. That inventory steadily increased through September 2008, at which point the number of properties banks resold regularly exceeded the number they took back at trustee sale. With 90,365 properties in inventory, banks currently carry about 4.77 months of supply, however, it takes the banks on average 7.33 months to dispose of a bank owned home, thus current inventory is less than should be expected from normal operations given current foreclosure volumes. Bottom line — there is no “shadow” inventory of bank owned homes being intentionally withheld from the market.
It seems to me that this is redefining shadow inventory to be inventory that is INTENTIONALLY held off the market. But I don’t really give a rat about whether it’s intentional or not… my interest is in whether a significant amount of must-sell inventory is likely to hit the markets at a pace fast enough to affect pricing.
By that criteria, they have nearly 5 months of inventory. Obviously if that hit all at once it would have a huge effect, so there clearly IS a good amount of shadow inventory.
The next question becomes how fast it will hit the market, and whether it will do so at a pace that affects pricing. At this point, it seems that it is hitting at a pace slow enough that it isn’t dragging prices down (ie whatever inventory is hitting is outpaced by fsd’s pent up supply).
Will that continue? They say that bank-owned inventory “steadily increased through September 2008, at which point the number of properties banks resold regularly exceeded the number they took back at trustee sale”. However, that is just stuff that has made it all the way to bank owned… the big issue seems to be those who are in default but not bank owned yet, or who’ve stopped paying and not even officially gone into default.
So unfortunately while the radar numbers are interesting they don’t seem to provide the whole picture on the scale and potential effect of shadow inventory… unless I am misunderstanding something (which is entirely possible).
