Friday, July 31, 2009

Sonoma Canary

Below are the Notices of Default and Trustees Deeds for the county of Sonoma, as taken from the Sonoma County Assessor. I thought I would regularly post these as indicators of the real estate situation and "recovery" in California.

Note the drop in NODs and Trustees Deeds as the new California law (SB 1137) went into effect. It effectively delayed the foreclosure process, offering no real benefit or solution for house debtors. The numbers below appear to support its lack of effectiveness.

May '09: Notice how NODs are back to the high levels, yet Trustees Deeds are not back up to the previous levels (200-350). Give it time, however; this is still quite broken and disturbing. Do you see recovery in these number? BTW, Calculated Risk just posted an article on the Alt-A bomb exploding in Sonoma.

July '09 sets new record for NODs!!

NODs:
. . '08 . '09
Jan 451 . 394
Feb 513 . 468
Mar 498 . 553
Apr 509 . 497
May 505 . 491
Jun 492 . 562
Jul 460 . 615 New Monthly Record
Aug 482 . 425
Sep 191 . 399
Oct 178 . 379
Nov 241 . 079 - through Nov 6
Dec 500

* Sep '08: CA Law SB 1137 takes effect
* Dec '08: CA Law SB 1137 FAILS

Trustees Deeds:
. . '08 . '09
Jan 164 . 166
Feb 238 . 151
Mar 221 . 121
Apr 236 . 123
May 280 . 149
Jun 324 . 271
Jul 341 . 202
Aug 372 . 231
Sep 303 . 183
Oct 195 . 210
Nov 184 . 051 - through Nov 6
Dec 229

7 comments:

tom12008 said...

Thanks for this post. Any thoughts about the potential budget shortfalls due to reduced property tax revenues?

Tom

Tyrone said...

Tom,
You've probably seen the distress the state of CA is in, and I think local municipalities will also be hit hard. Interestingly enough, I dumped my municipal bond fund a couple of months ago and there are now numerous articles being written on the risks of holding them. I feel like the hounds are nipping at my heels.

And you must be clairvoyant. Here is an article from yesterday's Mercury news. I don't subcribe to the crap, but it was on the front page and I saw it as I was grabbing coffee in the AM. Things are stacking up like I anticipated.
Property tax assessments could plunge across California, worsening fiscal crisis
California's plunging property values have already clobbered homeowners, but now the trend is promising pain for struggling counties, cities and schools that rely upon property taxes — a downward shift unseen in decades.

"It's the first time since the Great Depression that we've had a negative growth in property taxes that are the heart and soul of local government services," said Paul McIntosh, executive director of the California State Association of Counties.

SoYouThinkYouCanInvest said...

But the stock market is up so everything is OK. The Fed says all we have to do is give them more power and everything will be fine. Check out this quote circa Germany 1922...

"The President of the Reichsbank whose industrial interests were negligible did not in essence depart from this argument, and in a speech on German currency in May 1922 greatly vexed Lord D'Abernon because he had (in the ambassador's words) 'pressed into the shortest space the maximum number of fallacies and errors'. As though his powers to wreck the economy were not great enough already, at the behest of the Reparations Commission, and in the expectation that money supply would thereby be divorced from political expedience, the Reichsbank was that same month declared autonomous, with Dr Havenstein its uncrowned king. He quickly showed that he, too, considered the fall in the exchange to be quite unconnected with the gigantic increases in note issue, and went on 'merrily turned the handle of the printing press completely unconscious of its disastrous effect.' There was evidence, D'Abernon believed, that 90 bankers in Germany out of every 100 expressed and perhaps held the same views. At any event, the financial press reported without dissenting from them."

The more things change the more they stay the same

HHB said...

Through Oct 23rd I've got (like you) 289 NOD. But I see 327 NTS??? Why are our numbers so far off?

Interesting aspect if true that NTS are outpacing NOD... foreclosure wave here we come.

Tyrone said...

HHB,
I'm just using the Sonoma county assessor (link in the first paragraph of the post). When I perform the record search, I'm looking for 'NT DEFAULT' and 'TRUSTEES DEED' numbers.

HHB said...

Got it. Thanks. I was looking at the 'NT Trustees Sale' which is now outpacing foreclosures.

The wave is coming.

Tyrone said...

Yes, it is.

It's fascinating to watch what is happening in this economy.
- Continued job losses
- CRE is tanking
- House Foreclosures continue
- Tax Revenue plummeting
- States continue to run deficits
- Fed continues to print money
- Massive unfunded liabilities
- etc...

Then you have the US dollar uncertainty.

There seems to be no end in sight for the next few years, and I have no idea how it all ends.