...real estate agents who sell foreclosed homes for banks said lenders have been holding back on foreclosures. One reason could be to avoid adding to the flood of foreclosed properties hitting the market and driving down prices.
“They just pulled the throttle back in the foreclosure process,” said James Madison, a foreclosure specialist at Coldwell Banker in Santa Rosa. “Most of my clients are saying the floodgates are going to open again in February.”
And this isn’t just the lower end of the market. The PD continues:
Homeowners who once seemed immune to the housing downturn now face having to sell to avoid foreclosure, said Beth Robertson, a Rohnert Park real estate agent.
“I have gotten a couple of calls from folks that are in trouble that I would never have thought would get in trouble,” said Robertson, a broker-agent for Century 21 Classic Properties.
Robertson’s clients are not subprime borrowers. But they now can’t afford loan payments after losing jobs or seeing incomes fall and can’t refinance because their mortgages exceed what the homes are worth, she said.
“I think we’re going to move into a whole different group. I think foreclosures are going to creep into the upper income brackets,” she said.
As the graph demonstrates, with Sonoma County nearly leading the nation in Option-ARM loans, this is something we’re going to be dealing with for the next few years.
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