Just trying to understand some of this data

[SD Realtor]

Hi guys –

Okay so I am sure this post will provoke all kinds of name calling and accusations of me being a bull market promoter.

In reality I am anything but that. However as I am always in search of facts I found some peculiar information that is contrasting with some of the recent information I have seen posted regarding foreclosures.

One thing that I am consistently puzzled about is that the numbers on foreclosure.com never seem to line up with the foreclosure information I receive from my title company. I have often wondered why and I still do not know why.

********

So in the recent thread Rich posted about the Foreclosure Chart Extravaganza there were some interesting extrapolations of some of the posters regarding the ratio of foreclosure sales to resales. So I went to the MLS and went back a couple months and did a very simple search.

1 – I searched using the alsdc parameter for zip codes to find total sales for the past few months.

2 – Then I did the same search but I did a string search for the following strings in the remarks field OR in the confidential remarks field; REO, bank, for*, to find the totals. The numbers are as follows:

1/1/08 – 1/31/08 REO Sales 251 Total Sales 1270
12/1/07 – 12/31/07 REO Sales 255 Total Sales 1459
11/1/07 – 11/30/07 REO Sales 177 Total Sales 1511
10/1/07 – 10/31/07 REO Sales 166 Total Sales 1406

***********

Okay so yeah there may be some MLS listings that did not have comments that my string searched for BUT I will say that there are also listings that have the strings I searched for in both the remarks and confidential remarks field. So that would be a redundant count in favor of REO sales. Now undoubtedly there are the REDC auctions as well and those are not counted. So the question is how many were sold at those auctions. Maybe a few hundred AT MOST and not all of those closed.

***********

Before you guys attack me all I ask is for rational explanations. Again, reading other posts I am seeing some … well what I would call very wishful posts about the ratios of foreclosures sold to non foreclosures sold.

My fear is that all of these posts are being made from extrapolations of data from foreclosure.com.

My question to ALL OF YOU is…

“Who is verifying the information from foreclosure.com”

Now if someone gathers data by looking at the tax rolls of sales and tells me, that in a particluar month, x number os sellers were lenders or reconveyance companies and y number were not, I will believe that to be truly golden data.

I am not saying the data I just produced here is golden. However yes anybody with MLS access can validate what I did because it is trivially easy.

Rich I ABSOLUTELY agree with your opinions on the entire market and the road we are heading down. However, you know me…. always the pain in the ass engineer who questions everything no matter if it is optimistic or pessimistic with regards to the integrity of the data. I am just not so sure that data of what I see is matching what is being produced by foreclosure.com.

The only explanations I see are either I am somehow missing a huge number of foreclosures on the MLS as my string search is not comprehensive enough, or there are not as many foreclosures as being reported, or there are as many foreclosures as being reported but there are A TON of non sold foreclosures which then implicates the banks as to hoarding properties (which I don’t think is happening) or there are large numbers of properties being moved in private auctions to which I do not know about.

Anyways, I am just trying to correlate the data guys.

[an]

The question I have regarding your method and comparing it with foreclosure.com # is that, are all the number in foreclosure.com in the MLS? Is there a possibility that because of the slow foreclosure process, many homes are just sitting either empty or in limbo or previous owner living rent free. Also, we really don’t know the integrity of foreclosure.com’s number, so we will have to take it with a grain of salt as well.

[an]

The question I have regarding your method and comparing it with foreclosure.com # is that, are all the number in foreclosure.com in the MLS? Is there a possibility that because of the slow foreclosure process, many homes are just sitting either empty or in limbo or previous owner living rent free. Also, we really don’t know the integrity of foreclosure.com’s number, so we will have to take it with a grain of salt as well.

[an]

The question I have regarding your method and comparing it with foreclosure.com # is that, are all the number in foreclosure.com in the MLS? Is there a possibility that because of the slow foreclosure process, many homes are just sitting either empty or in limbo or previous owner living rent free. Also, we really don’t know the integrity of foreclosure.com’s number, so we will have to take it with a grain of salt as well.

[an]

The question I have regarding your method and comparing it with foreclosure.com # is that, are all the number in foreclosure.com in the MLS? Is there a possibility that because of the slow foreclosure process, many homes are just sitting either empty or in limbo or previous owner living rent free. Also, we really don’t know the integrity of foreclosure.com’s number, so we will have to take it with a grain of salt as well.

[an]

The question I have regarding your method and comparing it with foreclosure.com # is that, are all the number in foreclosure.com in the MLS? Is there a possibility that because of the slow foreclosure process, many homes are just sitting either empty or in limbo or previous owner living rent free. Also, we really don’t know the integrity of foreclosure.com’s number, so we will have to take it with a grain of salt as well.

[Eugene]

I just looked into a small sample of SFRs that became lender-owned on October 1st. Less than 20% of those (5 out of 32) have been sold since. 30% are currently listed for sale. The remaining houses apparently either didn’t make it to the market yet or are pending.

So, it’s a long pipeline. You can confirm that by going backwards from your MLS, looking at random REOs sold and determining when they became REOs.

[Eugene]

I just looked into a small sample of SFRs that became lender-owned on October 1st. Less than 20% of those (5 out of 32) have been sold since. 30% are currently listed for sale. The remaining houses apparently either didn’t make it to the market yet or are pending.

So, it’s a long pipeline. You can confirm that by going backwards from your MLS, looking at random REOs sold and determining when they became REOs.

[Eugene]

I just looked into a small sample of SFRs that became lender-owned on October 1st. Less than 20% of those (5 out of 32) have been sold since. 30% are currently listed for sale. The remaining houses apparently either didn’t make it to the market yet or are pending.

So, it’s a long pipeline. You can confirm that by going backwards from your MLS, looking at random REOs sold and determining when they became REOs.

[Eugene]

I just looked into a small sample of SFRs that became lender-owned on October 1st. Less than 20% of those (5 out of 32) have been sold since. 30% are currently listed for sale. The remaining houses apparently either didn’t make it to the market yet or are pending.

So, it’s a long pipeline. You can confirm that by going backwards from your MLS, looking at random REOs sold and determining when they became REOs.

[Eugene]

I just looked into a small sample of SFRs that became lender-owned on October 1st. Less than 20% of those (5 out of 32) have been sold since. 30% are currently listed for sale. The remaining houses apparently either didn’t make it to the market yet or are pending.

So, it’s a long pipeline. You can confirm that by going backwards from your MLS, looking at random REOs sold and determining when they became REOs.

[temeculaguy]

This is a small sample confined to a particular area but may shore up foreclosure.com’s data. I am a cheap and arrogant bastard. This combination wont allow me to pay the subscription fee for foreclosure.com (which would cut into my porn website subscription budget) and the arrogance makes me think I can outsmart them. They give you a zestimate on the foreclosure page and a name on the preforeclosure page (they keep them there for a bit as inactive once they are foreclosures), I track both, use the gis and property tax website for the county to figure out the address using the name (tedious because you have to run all the apn’s on the street, for big streets I jog by and look for brown lawns). Then I run a grantee search online to verify the nod and not, then run the name in the newspaper legal classifieds to see the actual notice for the N.O.T. and get the debt amount. I have run about a hundred and all of them have fleshed out to be accurate. Furthermore I have found at least a dozen that never went into the MLS but some got for sale signs from out of county real estate offices and I have verified that they have sold to private paties that way, never going into the mls and selling for very low prices, almost making me angry that they didn’t go into the MLS. Conversely I have never found them on the MLS without first seeing them on foreclosure.com.

This is confined to a single zip code but may explain the data anamoly, my conclusion is the mls data is faulty, not foreclosure’s.

I can only offer my small sample tracked for about a year, I would do the sample in another area to verify my results but that would qualify as an obsessive compulsive disorder, for now I can justify my insanity and I hear that the meds have terrible side effects.

[temeculaguy]

This is a small sample confined to a particular area but may shore up foreclosure.com’s data. I am a cheap and arrogant bastard. This combination wont allow me to pay the subscription fee for foreclosure.com (which would cut into my porn website subscription budget) and the arrogance makes me think I can outsmart them. They give you a zestimate on the foreclosure page and a name on the preforeclosure page (they keep them there for a bit as inactive once they are foreclosures), I track both, use the gis and property tax website for the county to figure out the address using the name (tedious because you have to run all the apn’s on the street, for big streets I jog by and look for brown lawns). Then I run a grantee search online to verify the nod and not, then run the name in the newspaper legal classifieds to see the actual notice for the N.O.T. and get the debt amount. I have run about a hundred and all of them have fleshed out to be accurate. Furthermore I have found at least a dozen that never went into the MLS but some got for sale signs from out of county real estate offices and I have verified that they have sold to private paties that way, never going into the mls and selling for very low prices, almost making me angry that they didn’t go into the MLS. Conversely I have never found them on the MLS without first seeing them on foreclosure.com.

This is confined to a single zip code but may explain the data anamoly, my conclusion is the mls data is faulty, not foreclosure’s.

I can only offer my small sample tracked for about a year, I would do the sample in another area to verify my results but that would qualify as an obsessive compulsive disorder, for now I can justify my insanity and I hear that the meds have terrible side effects.

[temeculaguy]

This is a small sample confined to a particular area but may shore up foreclosure.com’s data. I am a cheap and arrogant bastard. This combination wont allow me to pay the subscription fee for foreclosure.com (which would cut into my porn website subscription budget) and the arrogance makes me think I can outsmart them. They give you a zestimate on the foreclosure page and a name on the preforeclosure page (they keep them there for a bit as inactive once they are foreclosures), I track both, use the gis and property tax website for the county to figure out the address using the name (tedious because you have to run all the apn’s on the street, for big streets I jog by and look for brown lawns). Then I run a grantee search online to verify the nod and not, then run the name in the newspaper legal classifieds to see the actual notice for the N.O.T. and get the debt amount. I have run about a hundred and all of them have fleshed out to be accurate. Furthermore I have found at least a dozen that never went into the MLS but some got for sale signs from out of county real estate offices and I have verified that they have sold to private paties that way, never going into the mls and selling for very low prices, almost making me angry that they didn’t go into the MLS. Conversely I have never found them on the MLS without first seeing them on foreclosure.com.

This is confined to a single zip code but may explain the data anamoly, my conclusion is the mls data is faulty, not foreclosure’s.

I can only offer my small sample tracked for about a year, I would do the sample in another area to verify my results but that would qualify as an obsessive compulsive disorder, for now I can justify my insanity and I hear that the meds have terrible side effects.

[temeculaguy]

This is a small sample confined to a particular area but may shore up foreclosure.com’s data. I am a cheap and arrogant bastard. This combination wont allow me to pay the subscription fee for foreclosure.com (which would cut into my porn website subscription budget) and the arrogance makes me think I can outsmart them. They give you a zestimate on the foreclosure page and a name on the preforeclosure page (they keep them there for a bit as inactive once they are foreclosures), I track both, use the gis and property tax website for the county to figure out the address using the name (tedious because you have to run all the apn’s on the street, for big streets I jog by and look for brown lawns). Then I run a grantee search online to verify the nod and not, then run the name in the newspaper legal classifieds to see the actual notice for the N.O.T. and get the debt amount. I have run about a hundred and all of them have fleshed out to be accurate. Furthermore I have found at least a dozen that never went into the MLS but some got for sale signs from out of county real estate offices and I have verified that they have sold to private paties that way, never going into the mls and selling for very low prices, almost making me angry that they didn’t go into the MLS. Conversely I have never found them on the MLS without first seeing them on foreclosure.com.

This is confined to a single zip code but may explain the data anamoly, my conclusion is the mls data is faulty, not foreclosure’s.

I can only offer my small sample tracked for about a year, I would do the sample in another area to verify my results but that would qualify as an obsessive compulsive disorder, for now I can justify my insanity and I hear that the meds have terrible side effects.

[Author]

Posts