Linkery

Hello everyone — Econo-Almanac updates of late have been meager even by my modest standards. So what do I offer upon my return? An in-depth treatise, perhaps? A new and exciting piece of research? Maybe even just a chart?

No, I’m afraid all that I have for you the blogging equivalent to a television show’s flashback episode — the ever-popular list of links. Here we go!

1. Partner in dim sum consumption crime and occasional Econo-Almanac guest contributor Ramsey Su appeared in the Wall Street Journal to spread his usual joy. Said the WSJ:

   An auction of about 135 foreclosed homes in San Diego Saturday provided more sobering news for mortgage lenders. Ramsey Su, an investor and former real-estate broker who attended, calculated that the high bids for the homes averaged 67% of the prices they fetched when they were last sold, mostly in 2004 or 2005. At a similar auction in San Diego in May, the average was 73%. The auction was held by Real Estate Disposition Corp., Irvine, Calif., which promotes such sales on the www.usahomeauction.com Web site. REDC officials couldn’t be reached to comment.

2. Ramsey showed up again over at my favorite blog Calculated Risk, this time in a discussion of recent foreclosure statistics in San Diego. Specifically, there were 349 REOs last week! (An REO is basically the moment when the lender takes back a delinquent borrower’s home).

   This data is admittedly noisy week to week, but that number is huge. Last month, to put it in perspective, there were 554 existing home sales per week. Last week’s REO number is 63% of the total amount of last month’s weekly resales… not good.

3. Kelly and Vlad at voiceofsandiego.org put together a handy interactive San Diego foreclosure-ometer, for lack of a better word, that lets you view various zip codes’ foreclosure stats.
4. My pal Jim the Realtor updated the highly informative but maybe-not-so- imaginitively-named Jim Ratio, which measures supply and demand by comparing the number of active listings to the number of pending home sales. A higher number is worse, because it means that there is higher supply in comparison to demand. The Jim Ratio is better than my monthly chart on months of inventory because it uses data that is more current… the only reason I don’t keep track of it myself is that I don’t have the historical data to make proper comparisons.

   Anyway, Jim notes that the ratio has deteriorated noticably in the high-end markets of late. He concludes, "It looks like problems are spreading." No big surprise considering that old Cap’n Credit Crunch has now set sail for the North County Coast.

   (That last bit may well qualify me for mockery in Tanta’s Muddled Metaphor Index series, but I just can’t change my breakfast cereal referencing ways).