The Short Sale Monitor

[KingKong]

PS,

What’s your web site address? I would be very interested in reading them 🙂

[jimklinge]

When I checked for short sales in the active listings in San Diego County only, detached and attached, I got 933.

I input ‘%short sale’ in each of the remarks, conf remarks, and supplemental categories. Some guys put ‘not a short sale’ just to be picked up on these types of searches, so it’s probably +/- 10% or so.

If you don’t put the % in front, you only get the ones that have ‘short sale’ as the first two words.

Jim the Realtor

[sdrealtor]

Thank you Jim Klinger,
I’m not one who is married to his ideas and am willing to admit fault in my technique in order to produce a better measure. I included my search methodology in case someone could find a flaw in it and help me improve it. Henceforth, the count will reported based upon the improved search methodology suggested by Jim Klinger.

FYI, I ran a double check on his numbers and came up with a few more today so I’m confident his count was good for yesterday.

The count starts over with a baseline on 11/27 of 933.

[jimklinge]

Klinger was the guy on MASH, my name is Klinge, like the Klinge-ons (except they’re a little better-looking).

BTW, the ones that state ‘not a short sale’ are usually bank-owned already, so there are plenty that are ‘distressed’.

The lenders are getting buried by foreclosures, and should be giving them away in another 6-12 months. They’ve been trying to hang tough, but they have to be bursting at the gills.

Jim the Realtor

[sdrealtor]

Update Time!! Thanks to Jim Klinge for the suggested improvement

978 up from 933 last week. Total SD County listings for attached and detached properties are 17,404 down from 18,070.

In the submarket I track very closely inventory is falling and pending are holding steady to slightly increasing. The inventory and pending numbers are actually better this year vs exactly 1 year ago. Inventory is up 18 but pendings are also up 18. This time last year the ratio of Actives to pendings was 3.5 and today it is 3.3. It constantly surprises me that things aren’t worse but they just aren’t yet. The next major test will come in Feb/Mar when inventory starts coming online rapidly. Will there be buyers?

On a side note, the high end ($2M+) seems to be going great. I have 2 clients in escrow on spec homes currently being built and expect to put another one in escrow this week. See you next week.

[Anonymous]

Today’s Union-Trib article states “As of Nov. 20, short sales were noted for 55 listings, out of 27,571 total sales”

UT article

Say what?

[sdrealtor]

It’s probably the number of closed sales. There are alot more than that pending right now. Short sales take a while to close and have really been picking up steam the last 3 months. Prior to that there weren’t many. It’s coming. I should have an update on the figures later today.

[sdrealtor]

997 up from 978 last week. Total SD County listings for attached and detached properties are 16,947 down from 17,404.

In the submarket I track very closely inventory is where it was last year and falling faster than last year (more people are giving up for the holidays quicker). Pendings are about 10% higher than last year. It constantly surprises me that things aren’t worse but they just aren’t yet.

New insight of the week. Last week I spent a day visitng the new home communities in Coastal North County. I expected them to be in really bad shape but it was the complete opposite. Most of them have figured out a way to thin out their inventory. The best deals seemed to be in October as most of the reps said you could get a better deal then than today. There aren’t alot of compelling new homes left on the market nor will there be this Spring around here. This could help keep the market together a bit. I’m starting to think the market will stay together better than I thought and am considering scaling back my predicted price decline from 10% to 5% for 2007.

[SD Realtor]

sdr I could not agree more with you. I accompanied some clients to some of the new developlments last week as well. It seems to me that the builders combo of price reductions and slow release schedule has worked out well. I do not think they are in the same dire straights we presupposed them to be. I completely agree with a slower depreciation cycle. I predict about 7-8% next year in the negative direction.

We need a major catalyst to move pricing. Hopefully the loan resets will push pricing down. I think the developers have covered themselves and they are reaching thier new equilibrium. Resellers simply are digging in thier heels (at least ones I have been dealing with) so that leaves the real work to be done by those who are financially strapped. I believe the spring will give us a big fat inventory push but I also think the bulk of those who don’t sell will simply sit on thier property rather then yield.

Something big has to happen.

SD Realtor

[powayseller]

SD Realtor and SDrealtor, what are your thoughs on the quality of inventory? What I mean, is the effect of rising mortgages and unemployment or relocations creating incentives to sell, versus those just listing to test the market? Also I’d like your thoughts on the quality of the homes themselves, are they cleaned up and fixed up ready to show/sell? I’ve heard that many homes are an embarassment to show, and the few good homes out there end up with multiple offers. So there’s a lot of inventory that is not serious or that’s just plain crap, so the “true inventory” is not 20K but much less. So the true months supply is not 8 or 9, but could be even 4 or 5.

Also I’d like anyone’s input on why there’s a 10% discrepancy between ZipRealty and MLS on the inventory numbers. MLS has about 10% more listings than ZipRealty.

[SD Realtor]

Some of the people I have been working with recently have not prepared the home to sell properly, basically ignoring my advice. They are also priced to high and IMO will not sell. I have told these clients over and over again what they need to do and how they need to price. The homes that were priced properly and spruced to show did indeed sell. The majority of these sellers simply have built up equity and are not what I would classify as motivated. Others are just well… I hate to say this… stupid…

Example… seller in Encanto… not a great neighborhood. Has a ton of equity and has his home priced about 10% to high. Still got an offer 25k below his low end… He didn’t wanna touch it. Mind you this is after 60 days of NO activity. He said that with that offer he couldn’t move to the Eastlake home he wants without pushing his mortgage up a few hundred dollars. He cannot fathom that the value of his home in Encanto will NEVER achieve a value level of that of Eastlake. Regardless of what the market does, Eastlake will always be a better place to live then Encanto. He seems to think that somehow he will get an appreciation rate in Encanto that will outperform Eastlake, then he will sell his Encanto home, buy in Eastlake and then realize an increased appreciation rate in Eastlake.

sdrealtor works in a more high end area while I am all over the county. The clients I have that lived in his neck of the woods indeed did prep thier homes much better and were more price competitive.

So your statement about alot of inventory being pure crap… Inventory is inventory right? I think there is pure crap regardless of the market conditions dont you? In good times the pure crap sells and in bad times it doesn’t but it is still inventory. I wouldn’t discount the crap now like you are implying because it cannot be discounted during good times… Maybe it could be argued that in good times the ratio of crap to good homes is even WORSE then in hard times!

I couldn’t tell you why Zip and MLS differ. I “believe” that like any other on line MLS provider Zip indeed receives all of the listings from the MLS itself. Now recall that the Sandicor MLS does have listings in shadow zips, Imperial and Riverside county etc… So the more in depth way to do it would be to go by zip codes only. Then throw out the shadow zip codes of the MLS.

SD Realtor

[powayseller]

Do you think there has always been the same amount of crap inventory? Homes messy, in disrepair?

In ZipRealty, you can choose the area of town to search. So you wouldn’t end up with Riverside, because searching under San Diego, you only get San Diego areas as options. So maybe ZipRealty is better?

[sdrealtor]

SD R,
A quick tip. When you try to enter all the ZIP codes individually, Tempo cant handle it. Just enter the letters “ALSDC” in the zip box and click no shadow Zips. It will only give you SD County listings which are currently a total of 16,681 Combo (attached and detached)lisitngs.

SDR

[powayseller]

MLS inventory on 12/1 was 19,066, so we lost 2200 listings in 2 weeks? I guess that’s about right – December inventory was down 10% last year too.

I’m confused about ZipRealty vs. MLS. Right now, Zip has 2000 more listings than the MLS, but in September it had 2000 fewer listings. (ZipRealty has 18,664 homes, MLS has 16,681. In Sept, ZipRealty had 20,500 , MLS inventory was 22,785)

[PD]

Is MLS 060065973 a short sale? It looks like this was a speculator. I think I saw somewhere that that it was purchased last summer for 1,050,000. They started out asking 1,185,000 to 1,149,000 and have lowered the price to 999,000. They want to close by the end of Dec.
Anybody have info on this?

[Author]

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