Short sales and foreclosures made up 52 percent of all recent Southern California home sales --

[415_s2k]

Originally Posted by 1AngryTaxPayer

Guess it depends on where but places near the beach here have been moving and still pricey.

Yeah, that's because those places are actually desireable, and generally established, communities.

I'm sure that a lot of the short sales that we're seeing are in places that exploded during the credit boom; holdovers from that sad time where everyone was under the delusion that if you bought a house in a planned community in the middle of the desert for $500k+ then, it'd be worth a million in a couple years.

If anything, I see this as the tail end of the whole mess.

[tickyul]

Originally Posted by Don9

Maybe where you live but not in Orange county beach communities. Homes hit the market and then sit, then the price starts to drop. Some people put offers but then they find out the bank won't approve them. Once a home price hits a certain low level, usually ~150K below the initial asking price, then the home goes into escrow. I have seen this happen over and over.
We are starting to see many short sales and REO's and very few regular sales.

I agree, RE markets vary a LOT. But I still believe that the correction, or what little is left of it after government meddling, is natural and needed.

People who have interests in RE in one form or another are blubbering real loud because they want MORE gravy to come their way.

[Vascodagama]

Originally Posted by 415_s2k

Yeah, that's because those places are actually desireable, and generally established, communities.

I'm sure that a lot of the short sales that we're seeing are in places that exploded during the credit boom; holdovers from that sad time where everyone was under the delusion that if you bought a house in a planned community in the middle of the desert for $500k+ then, it'd be worth a million in a couple years.

If anything, I see this as the tail end of the whole mess.

Where I'm at in a beach town, we saw homes drop from >700K to <500K in just the past 4 years and those were the starter homes. In the Harbour you could not find a home below 1m and most were over 2m but now we see some homes in the 700-800K range for the low end. Most of the home sales are distressed and if you don't have cash you can forget getting a loan.

[alexxiz]

Originally Posted by tickyul

Foreclosure.....REO...whatever....the market in Ca is highly competitive. Lot of these "cheap" houses are garnering multiple offers the day they are listed....many of these houses are bought up by investors with cash.

The hoopla about a Real Estate crash is just a bunch of bunk.

Yeah, there's a fair deal of competition for these bottom of the market REO houses, especially after the owner-occupant period expires and investors can come in. Most houses in CA I tried to buy had multiple offers. The only exception probably are heavy situations like "no building permit" or "needs 25K septic"

[alexxiz]

They're starting to dump big batches of foreclosures wholesale to investors... guess who's eyeing it already? Wall street. Another Hidden Bailout: Helping Wall Street Collect Your Rent | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone