Two and a half years into the foreclosure crisis still engulfing the Sacramento region, the number of households surrendering keys to lenders has blown past the 40,000 mark – hitting a new housing bust high of 41,903.
It's the newest count in a growing tally of foreclosures that claimed 4,448 more area homes in April, May and June, researcher MDA DataQuick reported Wednesday.
Statewide, lenders have taken back 410,744 homes since the start of 2007, including 45,667 in the second quarter, when they also sent default notices to 124,562 more homes. DataQuick said 10,682 of those defaults were in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties.
Lenders issue the formal foreclosure warnings when homeowners fall three months or more behind on payments.
Analysts on Wednesday called the numbers a sign that the foreclosure crisis remains grim as the economy stumbles and unemployment has risen to 11.6 percent in the capital region and statewide. Widespread state government furloughs amounting to 14 percent wage cuts in thousands of area households – and the resulting economic contraction for other businesses – are also tightening the vise.
At area loan counseling centers like ClearPoint Financial Solutions, unemployment and lost income are now the new face of the loan crisis, said spokesman Bruce McClary.
"It doesn't matter what kind of mortgage they have. It's the change in income and financial circumstances," he said.
The firm recently merged with By Design Financial Solutions, a nonprofit counselor with offices in North Highlands.
DataQuick's quarterly report shows that many borrowers getting into trouble with mortgages aren't escaping.
"It's proof that there hasn't been this huge shift toward workouts, whether that's been a short sale or a loan modification," analyst Andrew LePage said.
Santa Ana-based First American CoreLogic reported recently that 9 percent of home loans in Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado and Yolo counties were delinquent in May. DataQuick said that June counts of foreclosures and notices of default were up sharply from those in April and May, suggesting worse numbers in the third quarter.
In Roseville, Penny Krainz fears she will be one of those statistics. This week she got a 90-day notice that she would be losing her job at an area high-tech company.
"That ought to be right around the time they foreclose on my house," she said Wednesday.
Krainz stopped making payments months ago, she said, on a house she bought in 2002 for $210,000.
A bigger house next door – a bank repo once valued at $379,000 – recently sold for $114,000, she said. That drove her into a category of borrowers who simply give up because they have high payments and owe so much more than the house is worth.
"This is so out of the realm of my upbringing," Krainz said. "I would never in a million years not paid my mortgage."
DataQuick reported that half the loans that defaulted in the second quarter were made before July 2006 and half were made afterward. Lenders that originated the majority of the troubled loans were Washington Mutual, a failed thrift taken over late last year by JPMorgan Chase; Wells Fargo; and Countrywide, the failed lender taken over by Bank of America in mid-2008.
Second-quarter foreclosures and defaults in area counties:
• Amador County: 29 foreclosures and 85 defaults.
• El Dorado County: 202 foreclosures and 632 defaults.
• Nevada County: 98 foreclosures and 286 defaults.
• Placer County: 515 foreclosures and 1,570 defaults.
• Sacramento County: 3,019 foreclosures and 6,862 defaults.
• Sutter County: 154 foreclosures and 355 notices of default.
• Yolo County: 216 foreclosures, 541 defaults.
• Yuba County: 215 foreclosures and 351 defaults.
Source: SacBee
Author: Jim Wasserman
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