How fast is the distressed inventory being worked through? (foreclosure, mortgages, sales)

[Escort Rider]

In today's Los Angeles Times there is a brief article about the October home sales in California (up slightly) and the median prices (down slightly). But what caught my eye was this sentence: "More than half the previously owned homes that sold in California last month were either foreclosures or short sales."

I am wondering if that represents a substantial working through of the distressed inventory (I don't mean the result for a single month, but provided that the trend continues for a while) or if it is still just a drop in the bucket. Can someone provide some perspective?

[chet everett]

I ain't gonna pretend to have all the answers on this, but I agree that in my neck of the woods it certainly seems that lenders are getting faster about making decisions.

Prices are, in some cases, coming up a bit, and some folks that have been coasting are getting evicted, so it is far from rosy, but I suspect that many lenders have finally gotten to the point where they are no longer changing their strategy every other week...

[MrRational]

Originally Posted by Escort Rider

"More than half the previously owned homes that sold in California last month
were either foreclosures or short sales."

From the other end of the equation:
Stable and solvent homeowners who don't need to sell... generally aren't.

Can someone provide some perspective?

Until employment numbers stabilize AND average or typical or median compensation again expands...
median prices will continue to drop as they have been.

[Escort Rider]

Article in the L.A. Times this morning has some answers to the question I posed. Fewer mortgages going bad but foreclosures expected to increase - latimes.com

They quote various different "industry experts". Here is one quote: "...the nation is not even half-way through cleaning up the foreclosure mess...It could take three or four years to returen to a typical pattern of delinquencies and foreclosures..."

The most optimistic fellow "believes that it will take at lest two more years to resolve the crisis."

[msdmoney]

Yep, the foreclosure mess is still far from over.

[High_Plains_Retired]

Real estate is a local thing. General statements regarding nationwide scenarios should be taken with a grain of salt. There are places where prices appear to have stabilized somewhat and even rising.

[NinaN]

From today's California Real Estate Magazine:

Shadow Inventory Declines. There is now a 5-month supply of shadow inventory vs. 6 months last year at this time. "...driven by a pace of new delinquincies that is slower than the disposition pace of distressed assets."

It remains to be seen if this continues.