From News10 (and video):Sources told News10 Alliance Title Company is shutting down operations in the Sacramento area effective immediately. At one time, Alliance was the number one title company in Sacramento based on market share according to one longtime employee...One employee who was laid off Monday said she was told there's not enough work to continue supporting office operations. "I've never seen it this bad," she said.From the San Jose Mercury News:Washington Mutual, battling to extricate itself from a worsening mortgage quagmire, said Monday that it will chop 3,150 jobs, close nearly 200 home loan offices, shut call centers and double provisions for loan losses.

From the Sacramento Bee (hat tip Gwynster): Sacramento City Manager Ray Kerridge said layoffs and other financial cuts will begin in February as the city scrambles to deal with an estimated $55 million budget shortfall next fiscal year. The Development Services Department, hit hard by the real estate downturn, will lose 16 employees in February. In a Wednesday letter to employees, Kerridge said, "employees in other departments may be affected."From the Appeal Democrat: The Sierra Cedar Products sawmill facility in Olivehurst will close March 31 or sooner, leaving more than 60 employees without jobs. Market conditions and log costs were two reasons cited by company representatives.
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From the Sacramento Bee: A persistent housing slump that has relentlessly driven down home prices has now wiped out at least three years of home equity gains across much of the Sacramento region...For buyers, who have driven home sellers and much of the real estate industry mad by patiently remaining on the fence, it's fresh proof of a market getting ever more warm and friendly.

That's especially true in suburban neighborhoods with plenty of new construction. "I've got two sets of buyers looking at property in Lincoln, 2,943 square feet listed for $325,000," said Viki Benbow, a Coldwell Banker real estate agent. "It's like $106 or $107 a square foot. Those houses three years ago were selling in the mid-$500,000s."
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DataQuick estimated that 27.6 percent of the region's existing home sales in October involved foreclosure properties. It was 35.9 percent in Sacramento County.
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From the Stockton Record: Home-sales auctions have popped in the Central Valley since last summer, but the latest twist is an online auction for new homes with a bidding process similar to that used by eBay.
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Some residents there aren't happy about the impending auction. Richard Provencio lives at the north end of Crescent Park Circle, a lane that has 14 of the 18 houses to be auctioned off - the remaining four are model homes a block south. "I feel very robbed," he said. "These are the same houses I paid $620,000 for, and now they could be selling for $300,000 to $400,000."...Recently, he counted 15 houses for sale down the long street from his house, and many sit empty because of foreclosure. "Our ghost town," he said. "It's just sad, man."

Many of the homes in the development were bought initially by investors and then filled with renters, he said...The auction likely will draw only more investors, who then will put renters into the houses, he said.
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From pacificunionhomes.com (hat tip reader HS):As I am sure you are aware, we all are experiencing a major downturn in our industry. These adverse conditions in the market have forced us to re-evaluate the Company’s future as a homebuilder. Accordingly, Pacific Union Homes has made the decision to cease further homebuilding operations. We will continue to build-out and sell those homes currently in production, including the model homes.

Pacific Union Homes is a diversified real estate company, with homebuilding being only one of its many operations. Although, the Company has decided to no longer operate as a production homebuilder, we will continue to focus on land development and our other real estate-related businesses. [Read more]

Some January price statistics for Sacramento County via the Sacramento Real Estate blog:

• Median: -27.5% YoY
• Average: -28.4% YoY
• Price per square foot: -27% YoY

From the Stockton Record:

A second major foreclosed-home auction will be coming to Stockton next week, with about 85 Stockton-area houses going up for sale at the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds.
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"The sellers are motivated, but they're not going to just dump the properties on the market," company spokesman Joe Joffrion said.
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From Inman News:
Tamara Dawn, a real estate broker in Sacramento, Calif., compiled statistics for Sacramento County which show that REO sales and short sales -- which are sales of homes in which the sale price falls short of what the homeowner still owes on the mortgage -- accounted for about 26.3 percent of total sales in the county from May 7 through Nov. 7.

A short sale can assist a homeowner in avoiding foreclosure and can be less costly for a lender than taking ownership of the property. Short-sale transactions can take more effort and time than typical real estate transactions, as they typically require extensive paperwork and can take weeks to receive a decision back from the lender on whether to approve or reject the terms of the sale.

From the Sacramento Bee: Every business day in the region an average of 85 people lost their homes to lenders, near double the number of foreclosures from June, according to Fair Oaks-based Foreclosures.com, a Web site for real estate investors.
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"I don't think we are seeing the worst of these numbers," said Robert Kleinhenz, deputy chief economist for the California Association of Realtors. Kleinhenz and others said they expect high foreclosure numbers to continue for at least another six months.DataQuick Stats by County
DataQuick Stats by Zip

From the Sacramento Bee: As foreclosures continue to grow in the capital-area real estate market, Sacramento and Elk Grove are copying a trend launched last year in Stockton: bus tours of bank-owned homes. As the buying season begins, three tours are planned for Feb. 23. There's one for investors in Sacramento and two for first-time buyers and investors in Elk Grove.
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From the Sacramento Bee:California's job market continued to stall out last month, as the housing slump infected the rest of the economy and increased the chances of a recession. Although the statewide unemployment rate was steady at 5.6 percent in October, some 15,800 payroll jobs disappeared. Job losses were recorded in practically every major economic sector, the state Employment Development Department said Friday.
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Sacramento's picture isn't much brighter than the rest of the state's. The region's unemployment went up a tenth of a point, to 5.5 percent. That compares with 4.2 percent a year ago.

From the Appeal Democrat: Six people are expected to lose their jobs and funding to 25 others cut back as the impact of the housing slump hits home in Yuba County. The Community Development and Services Agency Director Kevin Mallen said he had anticipated the slump and began closing positions when vacancies occurred in order to absorb the effects, but not all employees were safe. "This is directly tied to the volume of work. Building permits are off," Mallen said...In 2006, during the housing boom, the building department was issuing 1,200 permits; about 30 permits have been issued each month for the last six months.From the Sacramento Bee: Far removed from billion-dollar writedowns and the subprime meltdown, the Sacramento area's community banks appear to have escaped the worst of the housing slump. But they aren't immune, either. The downturn in real estate and the overall economy has cut into their profits just like the big banks. Although they largely sidestepped subprime lending, many are bracing for losses on loans to construction firms, subcontractors and suppliers.

From Capitol Weekly (hat tip JC):As the real estate market softened in 2007, the new owner of a three-bedroom, 1,600-square-foot house in Sacramento's Curtis Park neighborhood ran into trouble. The house that was purchased for $535,000 in January had lost equity. The owner fell behind in her payments, and eventually, the bank seized the home.

What makes this story different from the thousands like it is that the owner of this house was a member of Congress. The story of the foreclosure of Long Beach Democrat Laura Richardson's Sacramento home is a tale of a real estate market gone sour...While being elevated to Congress in a 2007 special election, Richardson apparently stopped making payments on her new Sacramento home, and eventually walked away from it, leaving nearly $600,000 in unpaid loans and fees.
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"It's kind of silly. You would think people who are making decisions for others would be able to make good decisions for themselves," she [the former owner] said. "She should have known what she could afford and not afford."Steepest price declines in the nation - check
Home of the most hated flipper in the nation - check

From the Sacramento Bee:"We're still climbing to a peak in foreclosure activity in California," said DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage. "We don't even have a sign of the peak."
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From the Modesto Bee:Northern San Joaquin Valley home prices have plummeted, but they haven't fallen enough to become affordable for most wage earners, a new study shows. Home buyers must earn about $98,000 a year to comfortably afford a median-priced house in Stanislaus County, the Center for Housing Policy reports. But workers in only one of the 64 occupations studied -- construction managers -- earned that much last year. Even two-income couples with good jobs -- such as accountants, police officers, school teachers and firefighters -- barely can cover ownership costs, the report showed.
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In calculating what's affordable, the study assumed not more than 28 percent of household income should pay the mortgage, property taxes and insurance. It also assumed buyers had a 10 percent down payment with a conventional loan.
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From the Central Valley Business Times: Five of the top ten [California] counties for foreclosures last month were in the Central Valley, led by San Joaquin County with 1,000 homes going on the auction block, a 700 percent increase over the number a year earlier. Stanislaus County is ranked third in the state on a per capita basis with Sacramento County fourth, Yolo County fifth and Merced County seventh, according to the computations by ForeclosureRadar.From the Central Valley Business Times: The Stockton metro area in the Central Valley had the nation’s second-highest home foreclosure rate last year among the nation's 100 largest metro areas, says a new report from RealtyTrac Inc. of Irvine, a foreclosure information company. With 4.866 percent of its households entering some stage of foreclosure during the year, Stockton saw a total of 22,184 foreclosure filings on 10,608 properties, up 271 percent from 2006, RealtyTrac says.
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From the Sacramento Bee: STOCKTON – Weeks after unveiling a relief plan for struggling subprime borrowers, U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson came to the epicenter of the nation's foreclosure troubles to tout the effort as a "market solution" that would be fixed if it falls short.
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Paulson promised to investigate the claim of one borrower who said her lender had refused to offer any solutions and would not talk with her until she had defaulted. "In June I'm staring down the barrel of an $8,000-a-month mortgage payment," said the woman, who declined to give her name. "From what I hear, our program is made for you," Paulson told her.
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From the Sacramento Bee: It's only one month's data, and it came from a winter month that's considered unreliable for trend spotting. But February sales of new and existing homes in Sacramento County -- the largest sector of the region's real estate market -- were just 7.7 percent fewer than in February 2007.
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Monterey Village Getting Shredded - photos & video at the Sacramento Real Statistics blog

From the Lodi News-Sentinel:The housing boom was good for Ben Juarez, like so many other Lodi residents. It meant steady work and extra cash from overtime jobs, installing air conditioners and gutters at tract homes across the region.
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Now, with the housing bust, life is full of worry for Juarez — who's been jobless since November — and for thousands like him in the area. The EDD estimates that Lodi's jobless rate reached 7.3 percent in December, the latest figures available. That's up from 5.5 percent in December 2006 and 5.6 percent in December 2005....It adds to up to more than 1,000 extra residents without work compared to the past couple years. Because of the epic housing meltdown, many of those unemployed are local carpenters, plumbers, landscapers, real estate and finance workers.

From the Wall Street Journal: Cities and counties with some of the worst fallout from the nation's housing slump also are seeing a sharp upswing in vacant homes, a trend economists say might set up further declines in home prices. The national homeowner vacancy rate, which gauges the number of vacant homes on the market, rose to 2.8% in the fourth quarter, according to Census Bureau data.
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Vacancies...jumped in some once-booming Western cities. Between 2005 and 2007, homeowner vacancies more than tripled to 3.8% from 1.2% in the Riverside-San Bernardino area, part of California's Inland Empire, east of Los Angeles. In the Sacramento area, vacancies jumped to 4.2% from 1.2%.Interactive Map - We beat Detroit!

From the Modesto Bee: Monica Granados regularly encounters people who aren't even trying to fight foreclosure in San Joaquin County. Granados is a process server who delivers eviction notices to houses repossessed by lenders.
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From the Modesto Bee: During the recession of the 1990s, government in general continued to hire. Sure, the state made the cities, counties and schools bear the brunt of the hurt. Some programs were eliminated or scaled back. But Stanislaus County continued to grow in population throughout that time. School enrollments continued to rise. Law enforcement grew in numbers.
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Now, some experts say, we're in or are heading into another recession. If the valley's housing market isn't totally in the gutter, it's right on the edge of the sidewalk next to your Gilton's bin on pickup day.
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[J]ob seekers are again turning to the public sector. But it's different this time around. Local governments aren't hiring, either -- certainly not as much as they did in the 1990s. In fact, they, too, are freezing jobs or sending out layoff notices...The county's library system will cut 94 part-time jobs...Modesto City Schools will eliminate 260 full- or part-time jobs -- 61 of which already are vacant -- as it trims $11.6 million.
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From the Sacramento Bee: [EDD labor market consultant David] Lyons said it was disturbing that the region has added just 6,600 jobs in the past year, a growth rate of just 0.7 percent. "We haven't been below 1 percent since 1993," he said. Unemployment has risen 1 percentage point in Sacramento in the past year. With housing still suffering and state government likely to slow down its hiring in the face of an estimated $14 billion budget deficit, the short-term outlook for Sacramento is spotty at best.From the Sacramento Business Journal: Year-over-year, construction fell by 7,200 jobs in the region, a 10.1 percent decline, while financial jobs declined by 3,100, off 4.7 percent. Those declines were steeper here than in the state as a whole.

December 2006 REOs: 283
December 2007 REOs: 1,155
Change: 308.1%

Total 2006 REOs: 1,326
Total 2007 REOs: 8,155
Change: 515.0%

December 2006 Pre-foreclosures: 1,052
December 2007 Pre-foreclosures: 2,380
Change: 126.2%

Total 2006 Pre-foreclosures: 10,505
Total 2007 Pre-foreclosures: 19,453
Change: 85.2%

More statistics at Foreclosures.com

From the Stockton Record:

Can't make your auto payment? Light your car on fire, and tell the insurance company you were a victim of theft. That's what a local prosecutor says he's seeing more of these days. But instead of chasing down a phantom arsonist, oftentimes he charges the car owner with insurance fraud.

A symptom of the overall economy - a troubled housing market and high gas prices - auto arsons in San Joaquin County have doubled in the past three years, according to the state Department of Insurance.
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From Forbes (hat tip Patient Renter):It's no secret that homeowners with subprime mortgages have taken a beating. Next up: those who have combined their mortgages with home equity loans, second loans or both. These combinations spell especially bad news for homeowners in Sacramento, Calif., San Diego, Washington, D.C., and Colorado Springs, Colo., markets with some of the nation's highest concentrations of homeowner debt. In these spots, prices are dropping, making it very difficult for homeowners to refinance as lenders are reluctant to take on risk.
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1. Sacramento, Calif.
Percent change [in median price] from 2007: -18.5%
Total outstanding mortgages: 480,881
Second mortgage or home equity loan: 129,736 (27%)
Both second mortgage and home equity loan: 7,288 (1.5%)Compare to other cities here.

[Update: added graphs]

Housing Tracker, median asking price: $300,000

Change from last year: -18.8% [-$69,500]

Change from Aug '05: -25.0% [-$99,900]

From the Sacramento Bee:Scared by growing numbers of bank-owned houses and for-sale signs in their neighborhoods, a handful of local cities are launching moves to help homeowners threatened with foreclosure. Their initiatives so far are limited to offering advice. Nobody's opening up the checkbook to bail out homeowners.
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"We don't know how far this is going to go," says Jim Lynch, community enhancement manager in Citrus Heights. "We've had housing setbacks over my 35 years, but I've never seen this many bank-owned properties and so many foreclosures."

From the Central Valley Business Times: Central Valley cities are among the most likely places in the nation to see home prices decline in the next two years, according to a report Tuesday from the PMI Group Inc. (NYSE: PMI), a Walnut Creek-based writer of mortgage insurance. The most likely place in the country is Naples, Fla., in PMI’s opinion, but Stockton and Merced are tied as the fifth most likely locations for price declines.

From the Granite Bay PT: Michael Lyon, chief executive officer for Lyon Real Estate...told the audience the market has changed drastically. In 2001 about 800 homes were sold throughout Placer County in about a month. "Today there are about 2,460 homes for sale in Placer County and only about 219 are sold each month," he said.