Real estate foreclosure (San Diego, Riverside, Orange: foreclosures, houses, to buy)

[gamebird98]

I have noticed that on Zillow that a great number of homes in Riverside are in Foreclosure....is this area that bad or is it a result of the housing bust?

[Electrician4you]

Riverside always was a bit behind and cheaper than OC. But depending on where in riverside/Inland Empire you buy you can be very close to OC. For example, we bought in Riverside. Simply because of the outrageous home prices in OC. The same house would visit about 850k in OC was about 500k in Riverside. And houses in Riverside sell fast if priced right.

[RosieSD]

This article does a good job of explaining the housing market in Riverside County:

http://journal.firsttuesday.us/river...ators-2/29239/

Basically, Riverside was hit very hard by the housing crisis and, although it's foreclosures have gone down every year over the last few years, it is still slowly recovering at least in comparison to coastal counties like Orange and San Diego. But, different parts of Riverside County have very different situations, so it also really depends where you are looking.

[SUPbud]

Also, take a grain of salt with the Zillow foreclosure listings. If a homeowner misses a payment or two, they want to skip calling that a 'pre-foreclosure' and go right to the 'foreclosure' category.

Unless you have the cash on hand to buy the property outright with no bank financing - I set Zillow filters to hide the foreclosures. Are you looking for property to purchase, or are you trying to divine financial "health" of a city block? We all have our metrics.