Foreclosures up 213% for July over last year
Those waiting for the lagging housing market to rebound were disappointed yesterday, as MDA DataQuick reported that 2,004 San Diego County homes went into foreclosure in July, a 9 percent increase over the previous month and a spike of nearly 213 percent over last year.
The July tally of mortgage failures was a record since DataQuick began tracking foreclosures in 1988. It was the county’s 40th consecutive month of year-over-year increases in both foreclosures and notices of default, the start of the foreclosure process.
Default notices totaled 3,006 last month, a drop of 2.5 percent from June, but an increase of 81 percent from a year earlier. Alan Gin, economist for the Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate at the University of San Diego, said it is too soon to know whether the small monthly drop foreshadows an improvement in the marketplace.
“We need to see many more months before we can say it’s a trend,” Gin said. “Prices are going down. A lot of people find it easier to walk away from their mortgages than fighting to stay in the house.”
A weakened economy and tight credit are preventing more buyers from entering the housing market, said Mark Goldman, a real estate finance instructor at San Diego State University.
“Foreclosures roar on,” Goldman said. “What will turn real estate around is the ability of people to pay more for their houses. That won’t happen for a while. The middle class is losing ground at an unprecedented rate.”
Around the county, the foreclosure problem “continues to be felt most acutely in certain inland neighborhoods in South, East and North County,” DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage said.
Ranked by foreclosures per 1,000 homes, the communities with the most default activity in July were southeast Chula Vista, Paradise Hills, northeast Chula Vista, east Escondido, San Ysidro and the 91913 ZIP code, which includes much of Eastlake and Otay Ranch.