Foreclosure Sales Information Now Available on SFGate

In case you missed the itty-bitty sidebar down in the bottom left corner of yesterday’s paper (which I almost did), the Chronicle will now be posting data on sold homes from foreclosure auctions. Every Monday on SFGate you can find out what sold on the courthouse steps the previous weeks. The data I looked at today was from the week of June 9th.

The easily searchable database allows you to look at the sales for a whole county or for a particular city. When choosing your parameters, you will probably notice that not every city in the county of interest is listed. That is because only the cities where homes actually sold at the auction will be listed. So if no foreclosed home in Hayward sold during the time period covered, that city will not be a choice you can see because there is no data.

Once you choose your county and/or city, a table will pop up with exact street address, city, zip, and last value. A details link can be clicked on which further breaks this down. Here you can find out how the property fared at the auction. If you see a person’s name in the “Owner” slot, then it actually sold to an individual. I looked at 10 homes in SM County of varying price points and all had bank names, meaning that the properties reverted to the banks. The “last value” is the price the home either sold for to an individual, or the 1st (or 2nd) mortgage amount currently on that property when a bank foreclosed on it. There is also a “transaction date,” which shows the date the auction outcome was recorded with the county recorder’s office. The website says this generally that happens within 7 to 14 days of the actual auction. There is also a handy dandy Google map on this details page so you can where the property is located (because it will come up for sale in the coming months.)