Report: Distressed properties selling in 20 days

Posted on by Listify Me

Orange County distressed properties — 18% of homes listed for sale and 41% of the residences recently put into escrow — are so scarce that buyers snap them up at a pace equal to selling in just 20 days.

Steve Thomas of ReportsOnHousing.com publishes every two weeks a report on the supply of local homes for sale and the share of that inventory that’s distressed properties — foreclosures and short sales. His latest report — as of June 21 — says …



The distressed inventory dropped another 6% in the past two weeks. In Orange County, the active distressed inventory, both short sales and foreclosures combined, continued to drop, shedding an additional 58 homes, or 6%. This segment of the housing market is by far the hottest, representing only 18% of the active inventory but 41% of all pending activity. Thus far in 2012, the distressed inventory has shed 2,179 homes, and now sits below 1,000 for the first time since 2007, totaling 992 total foreclosures and short sales. In the past two weeks, the foreclosure inventory increased by only 7 homes and has an expected market time of 19 days. The short sale inventory decreased by 100 homes in the past two weeks and now totals 742. The expected market time is 20 days. Yes, short sales may take a very long time to put together with the coordination of the lender(s) approval, the removal of HOA and/or tax liens, and bringing property taxes current. With so few homes on the market, short sales are being swept up almost as fast as the foreclosure market.

Some of the details …

  • 992 distressed Orange County properties were listed for sale — 18% of the 5,626 listed overall.
  • 1,511 new escrows were opened to buy distressed Orange County properties in the past 30 days. That is 41% of the 3,684 new pending sales countywide.
  • Thomas calculated “market time” — cross of supply and new escrows showing how long, theoretically, it would take to sell inventory. Using that “market time” math, there’s 0.66 months worth of distressed properties on the market — or 20 days worth — vs. 2.13 months worth of non-distressed homes. So, distressed homes currently sell 3.2 times faster than non-distressed homes.
  • 31% of the distressed listings were foreclosures being sold by banks; 69% were short sales.
  • 41% of the distressed listings were attached homes; 59% were detached homes.
  • 34% of distressed Orange County listings were in ocean-close communities.
  • Pricey? 57 of the listed distressed homes were price above $1 million — 6% of all distressed listings.
  • Cheap? 708 of the listed distressed homes were priced $500,000 or less — 71% of all distressed listings.
  • Chart summarizes trends in Thomas’ report, distressed counts and share of all listings (plus, pending sales and market time — demand divided by inventory.)

Highlights …

Please see:

Distressed properties selling in 20 days is a post from: Lansner on Real Estate

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