Public Auction of Foreclosures in California Spiked Again

As more lenders got exempted from the state mandatory waiting period for trustee sale filings, public auction of  foreclosures in California surged in June.

Nearly 22,300 residential units were auctioned off as foreclosure homes for sale in June, marking a jump of 25 percent from the May total, although marking an eight-percent drop from the June 2009 total. Under the California Foreclosure Prevention Act, mortgage lenders are required to wait for 90 days more before filing a trustee sale notice, in addition to the number of days mandated by previous laws.

Almost all California lenders, however, earned exemption from the waiting-period requirement after they implemented required loan modification programs for troubled homeowners. This exemption privilege enabled nearly every mortgage firm operating in the state to pursue repossession and put deeply distressed properties into list of bank REO homes. The properties sold off through auction in June represented $9.57 billion in residential mortgage loans.

The number of bank owned foreclosures in California also climbed up in the April-June quarter by one percent compared to the same quarter in 2009 to 45,765 units, accounting for 17 percent of the 269,962 units taken back by lenders nationwide. The total units in the lender repossessed property lists also represented 24 percent of the 192,422 homes notified of default or foreclosure statewide, based on a report from another firm.

In June, both foreclosure postings and lender repossessions dropped from May. Total postings fell by 4 percent to 69,114 in June from 72,030 postings in May while repossessions fell by 18.5 percent to 13,001 in June from 15,946 postings in May. In all the foreclosure charts for the first half, the first and second quarters, and for the months from April to June, California ranked fourth among states in foreclosure percentage.

In the entire first half this year, there were 340,740 postings of foreclosures in California, down by 15.25 percent from the July-December period last year and down by 13 percent from the January-June period in 2009.

Related Posts:

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• Foreclosures in Florida Most Persistent in the South
• California Foreclosures Remain High As Unemployment Rates Rise
• Foreclosed House Auction in Santa Cruz Sold Over 700 Homes
• Foreclosures by State Increased in the First Half of 2010