Foreclosure Numbers Keep on Rising

Property Shark released another foreclosure report, and despite a slow down last time around, this time it looks like the numbers are going up. Los Angeles leads in the metropolitan areas the report looks at (New York, Miami, and Seattle being the others) with a 196% increase compared to Q3 of 2007 in foreclosures. Ouch.Those numbers mean that .5% of all homeowners in LA are in foreclosure.The good news, if you can call it that, is that all of these foreclosures continue to be centered in the outlying areas like Palmdale and Lancaster (see chart, also courtesy of Property Shark). In the year or so that I’ve been following Property Shark’s reports, I have never seen any central or westside zip codes pop into these heavily-foreclosed categories. It really does seem like in LA, we’re dealing with pockets of very bad real estate that are dragging down prices and sales across the board.The report also made an interesting finding about who is behind all these bad loans: In Los Angeles, Countrywide had the most loans scheduled to foreclose, followed by Washington Mutual. Like most Americans, I’ve been watching the bailout debacle pretty closely, and have actually had mixed feelings on bailing out homeowners who got themselves into bad mortgages. I personally have always been pretty financially cautious and believe in a 30-year fixed with a monthly payment you know you can manage, so I have little sympathy for those who signed up for 1 or 2 year adjustables with a vague hope that they would be earning more or win the lotto by the time the payment changed. But when I see that Countrywide and Washington Mutual are holding so many of these bad mortgages, it does make me give more weight to the predatory lending argument. I have trouble believing that all irresponsible borrowers magically found their way to these 2 lenders. It does make it seem like there was pressure or bad advice being given. I’d be curious to hear what others think….