The prognosis is in: The housing market is picking up steam. There's no turning back. Sales volume and prices ticked up on a national level at the end of the summer, with existing home sales up 9.3% in August compared to a year ago, and median prices up 9.5% from a year ago.
All of this leads to a logical question: What about all those foreclosures economists and experts have warned about? Shadow inventory? Are there threats to the recovery that could crop up and throw us off course?
The good news is the foreclosure market is easing. Foreclosure inventory was down to its lowest level in August since April 2010. The 57,000 foreclosures completed in August puts the total number of homes that have foreclosed since September 2008 at 3.8 million, according to CoreLogic's latest report.
Granted, that's a lot of foreclosures in the overall housing fallout, and there is still a lot of foreclosure activity out there, depending on your market. But if the housing market were a hospital patient I think the doctors would say the foreclosure condition is improving – perhaps no longer life-threatening.
The five states with the highest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in August were: California (110,000), Florida (92,000), Michigan (62,000), Texas (58,000) and Georgia (55,000), according to CoreLogic. The five states combined account for 48.1% of all completed foreclosures nationally – which indicates the problem is still generally contained within certain markets.
Meanwhile, the states with the lowest number of completed foreclosures for the 12 months ending in August were: South Dakota (25), District of Columbia (113), Hawaii (435), North Dakota (564) and Maine (612).
The continued downward movement in the foreclosure market is a good indicator that the recovery is picking up speed.
The higher concentration of foreclosures in the five states noted above could continue to dampen or slow the recovery in those states, but again it really depends on the local market. For instance, California is ranked the top state for foreclosures over the last 12 months, but some of our local Bay Area markets aren't seeing much of that at all.
The main thing to watch is the overall trend, which is definitely sloping down. Thankfully, the shadow inventory problem that many were worried about these past few years seems to have deflated more gradually than initially thought so we didn't see a second flood of foreclosures all hit the market at the same time at the national level.
It will take some time, still, before foreclosures are completely out of the housing recovery vernacular. But things are looking good. We just have to charge ahead and make sure the systems in place for markets where foreclosures are still rampant are efficient enough to keep moving. Demand for these homes doesn't seem to be a problem.
Blog: Foreclosures Ease
Local foreclosures Short selling. Market is heating up!!
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Mary Ann KannelyPuente May 21, 2013 at 04:30 pm
Also, it would take some work but couldn't the books be divided up and put into the classrooms? Or…Read More is it because they were bought as library books with the library grant they have to stay in the library. It will be very embarrassing to tell book vendors that Luigi Aprea does not have a library anymore.
Mary Ann KannelyPuente May 21, 2013 at 04:26 pm
I don't know why the parents club can't run the library. They would have to be trained with the…Read More computer library program but I'm sure there would be parents that would be willing to do that. It is very sad that just because we can't hire a librarian that the students have to loose out. That does not seem fair to me. I thought the students were supposed to come first and not be denied services due to a budget shortfall. We were promised that the budget would not effect the classroom. I guess in this case the union is more powerful than necessary. So all those books are going to collect dust. How sad and unacceptable.
R. Gabriner May 13, 2013 at 02:37 pm
Nice work Blanca. An excellent student in our program.
Dr. Robert Gabriner, Director, Educational…Read More Leadership Doctoral Program
San Francisco State University
Raymond Ruiz April 13, 2013 at 10:54 pm
It just don't matter how she dresses,whoo her parents are or aren't. Nobody and I mean Nobody has…Read More the right to rape or force a femsle to have sex with her,and then to make matters worse,they posted pictures of her on facebook ! Better we as a community should be asking,what would possess the young guys to do something like this ! That is why We have Our teenagers and kids passwords or no internet period ! As a parent my heart goes out to het and her parents !
Tamra~Kathleen April 13, 2013 at 05:51 pm
The offensive comment we're discussing shows a complete lack of respect for women that permeates our…Read More culture. That this person actually thought this poor young girl had culpability for her attack is a symptom of our societies disregard for women. I'm actually glad he made the comment so we can look at and discuss the problem.
Berto April 12, 2013 at 07:27 pm
From one of the interviews I watched online, it seems that many Saratoga High students knew what…Read More happened at the party and had seen the pictures. How is it that arrests did not follow the assault and the suicide for over 6 months? Could it be that the students who knew information about the felony chose to remain silent? I hope that is not the case; we will surely find out as the details of the case are revealed in the media over the next weeks and months. In the meantime lets make sure we are teaching our kids about the responsibility of living in community and caring about others. God forbid that any of the students have to live with the knowledge that they could have prevented the suicide, or with the knowledge that they helped cover up such a heinous crime.