Foreclosed House Auction in Santa Cruz Sold Over 700 Homes

Foreclosed house auction sales in Santa Cruz County, California slowed in the July to September quarter, but the total of 751 houses sold is still high, based on data from Santa Cruz Record, a publication that monitors foreclosure data in the counties of Santa Cruz, San Benito and Monterey.

The total represented a drop of 25.3 percent from foreclosed home auction sales in the previous quarter, when a total of 561 housing units were auctioned off.

Meanwhile, over 500 households across the county received default notices in the third quarter, pushing the total defaults this year to 1,688 units, an increase of 12 percent compared to the same period last year. The total number of defaults in nearby Monterey County was however higher at 4,490.

Statewide, the mortgage lenders with the highest number of home loans that defaulted in the July to September quarter were Countrywide, which had 7,583 defaulting loans; Washington Mutual, which had 5,146 loans and Wells Fargo, with 4,425 loans. Wachovia, formerly World Savings, had a loan default rate of almost 12 percent, posting 4,237 loans in default. All these lenders were active in 2006 and all contributed to the continued rise in foreclosed house auction sales throughout California.

According to foreclosure analysts, most defaulting loans in California were made in the middle and in the last months of 2006 and that most loans are being serviced by financial companies other than the lenders who made the loans. In California, the servicers with the highest number of delinquent accounts are Cal-Western Reconveyance, ReconTrust Company and Quality Loan Service Corp.

Most default notices were sent to homeowners when they were already five months behind in their payments, according to foreclosure analysts. This is another indication that servicing companies have not been rushing to foreclose, careful not to overload the California market with foreclosures that could push down home prices sharply. In September, foreclosure auction sales statewide dropped by 37 percent.

In Santa Cruz, the total number of default notices so far in 2009 rose by almost 12 percent to 1,688 units, compared to 1,511 in 2008 while the number of foreclosures completed increased by more than seven percent from 1,060 units to 1,137 units

While foreclosed house auction sales in Santa Cruz dropped by over 25 percent during the quarter, traditional home sales rose by over one percent from 1,726 units to 1,750 homes.

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