Archive for February 26th, 2008
Watsonville Foreclosure Tour
February 26, 2008
No, we won’t have a cool bus like the guy in Stockton did as seen on 60 Minutes. But here’s what we do have: a bunch of folks interested in buying some investment-grade real estate down in Watsonville. We’re going to meet at my office in Capitola on Saturday, March 1 at 11 AM, and then make our way down to Watsonville. So far, most of the folks who are coming along are from the Santa Cruz Real Estate Investment Club, which I mentioned a few blog entries ago. If you’re not a member, this might be a good chance to meet some of the people involved and see if maybe you’d like to join too.
We are going to see about a half-dozen different REO properties that are presently for sale, all of which represent good opportunities for investors. I just spent the last hour or so going through every house and condo listing from Larkin Valley down through Watsonville, and I found that there are seventy listed REOs in that area.
Most of these REOs are not what I’d call investor grade - most of them are consumer grade, which is to say, they are priced for owner-occupants, not for investors. Investors need to pay less than retail consumers, because a true investor is looking for cash flow with a relatively small down payment - that is, he’s looking to actually get a return on his investment month to month, just as if he had it invested in an IRA or something.
But there are a few investor grade listings out there, and that’s what we’re going to be seeing this coming Saturday, March 1. If you are interested, just meet us outside my office at 3555 Clares Street (Suite WW) - next to the Fresh Choice Restaurant. We’ll probably want to carpool, but if you want to follow along, that’s fine - we will make copies of the properties we are going to see, if you have a GPS unit in your car or know Watsonville well, feel free to drive by yourself and just meet us at each property in turn.
I hope you can join us!
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 9:02pm
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January foreclosures up 57%
February 26, 2008
Yawn. Blink blink. Sip coffee. Take a peek at CNN.com. Front page news:
California had the largest total number of foreclosures among the states. There were more than 57,000 foreclosure filings there in January, one for every 227 homes. Florida trailed well back in total foreclosures with 30,000, but its rate of one for every 273 households was only slightly behind its West Coast rival.
Zoinks. That’s pretty impressive, but remember that this is foreclosure filings, i.e., notices of default, not actual foreclosures of homes. A good portion of people who receive notices of default will be able to cure the default or sell the property via a short sale before the actual foreclosure happens. And, it should be noted, the filings are up 57% year-over-year, not up 57% from the month before.
The article does speculate that the government & lender programs (e.g. Project Lifeline) may be helping to slow the rate of foreclosure filings. I’m a big sceptic on that one. I think that in many cases, folks just don’t see much upside in making exorbitant mortgage payments on a property worth perhaps half of what they paid for it two years ago. It’s one thing to struggle and fight to keep something that’s worth something; it’s another to throw money down a sinkhole of a mortgage where the upside is perhaps many years away.
I think that the wave of foreclosures will keep on surging for the foreseeable future. It hasn’t hit the more affluent parts of Santa Cruz yet, not really - but with the median price dropping in the county the way it did in January, perhaps we’ll see the foreclosure crisis spread from the extremes of the county to its heart. Let’s hope not.
Posted by SantaCruzBroker at 8:32am
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