Foreclosure activity and inventory continued to decline in the Bay Area in February, according to data from ForeclosureRadar. It’s already March… anyone expecting a surge in foreclosures for sale in 2012 is going to be disappointed. It’s not going to happen. Alameda County Foreclosure Activity Alameda County Bank-Owned Inventory Contra Costa County Foreclosure Activity Contra Costa County [...]

One of the data sets I follow is a subset of Alameda County real estate loans made during the bubble years. Recently I noticed that the remaining loans (the ones that hadn’t yet been foreclosed or short sold) looked to be nearly 100% performing; very few Notices of Default or offered as short sales. It [...]

WHAT IS THE SHADOW INVENTORY?                      HOW DOES IT IMPACT THE VALUE OF YOUR HOME? The first time I heard of a “shadow inventory” was in 2008.  At a local real estate seminar, a vice president of a major national bank commented that there was no [...]

In the car this morning I heard Kamala Harris being interviewed on one of the news stations. My first reaction was that I like her a lot. She’s a tough cookie and definitely intends to continue going after the banks. And, she really doesn’t like Edward DeMarco. Then she invited homeowners to go to the [...]

Bottom-pickers have smelly fingers. Ever since the first local home price declines of 2006, there have been groups calling the bottom. Realtors, mortgage brokers, home builders, and various economists crawl out of the woodwork each Spring to announce that home prices are about to start going up. Their logic is always flawed, their data too [...]