The latest distress indicators for the Washoe County housing market were released this week, and the news is grim. According to Ticor Title’s March 2010 statistics on pre-foreclosure properties in Washoe County, both Notices of Default (NODs) and Notices of Trustee Sale (NTS) were up on a month-to-month and year-over-year basis. A Notice of Default is generally recorded once a homeowner is more than 90 days late with a payment and a Notice of Sale is generally filed within 90 days of a NOD recording (but anecdotal reports reveal much longer times are possible before the bank files a NOD or NTS). Because many homeowners are able to bring their loans current after a NOD or NTS is filed, not all of these transactions turn into a foreclosure, but as leading indicators they do help us predict where the market is headed. Clearly, there are still a TON of distressed homeowners out there whose homes have yet to become part of the “foreclosure” statistics.
March 2010 stats
In March, NODs were up 7% from February and up 8% from a year ago, while NTS filings were up 93% in February and 53% from last year. Given the peaky nature of these statistics from month-to-month, it’s important to look at the trends of a few months of data in order to get a better sense of where the market is headed, and in that sense, it’s apparent that both NODs and NTSs have been headed up over the past several months.
What does this mean for foreclosures in Washoe County? Well, I wouldn’t bet on them decreasing any time soon. I’d look for there to be a spike in actual foreclosures over the next few months. One thing that complicates the actual forecasting of these numbers is the fact that banks are not held to any specific time line for this process, and all indications are that they are taking longer than normal to process these cases in an effort to keep these properties out of the housing market and off their balance sheets. We will be calculating the actual March foreclosures from the assessor’s data soon, so that number doesn’t appear in the chart above, but if the foreclosure numbers from Ticor and RealtyTrac are any indication, plan on March’s foreclosure numbers to be up quite a bit from February.
To download the latest housing and foreclosure data for Washoe County, visit the Home Sales and Foreclosure Data section of our website, and subscribe to our News and Announcements blog using the RSS Feeder on our site to get updates delivered to your inbox in real time!
