Short Sales & Foreclosures
Sunday, November 27th, 2011
Foreclosures happen when the bank reclaims your property. Short sales are what people do to avoid the bank reclaiming their property (but ironically, the person is still left without their property).
Orange County has taken a lot of flack recently for being an area with a large amount of foreclosures. The reality is, Orange County follows the same trends that most of the metro areas on the east coast have been following.
Let’s look at this way, and we can keep it all on the West Coast. Orange County has over 10% of their listings as foreclosures. On the other hand, Washington has the exact same numbers. Oh, actually Washington has over 11% of listings. So they have even more foreclosure per capita than Orange County does.
One the flip side of things, another important metric to look at is the percentage of short sales. In Orange County, the percentage of short sales has climbed to about 26% of home listings right now.
So let’s think of this way. 1 in 6 listings are short sales in Washington… 1 in 4 listings are short sales in Orange County. 33% more are short sales. That’s a substantial difference. But what is that difference you ask?
More short sales mean that home prices were inflated higher. People bought when the home was ‘worth’ a lot, and then the value of that home fell, so people don’t want to pay on it because really, they’re wasting their money on something that won’t have the same value in a couple years.
This makes for a slow house sale situation. Everybody with their homes for sale are waiting for everybody else to come and purchase their home, and they can’t purchase unless somebody comes and purchases theirs…
So next time you’re in the Orange County area, check out what listings are for sale. Turns out, home prices actually aren’t that bad. Compare them to Denver, and you’ll be happy to see that Orange County doesn’t cost much more anymore.
While we’re on the topic view Orange County Foreclosures and Orange County Short Sales

