Unfortunately for Jackie and Brayden of Placentia, their purchase prior to the effects of the credit crunch have rendered them over $100,000 in equity loss in just 4-5 months. But is it just Placentia alone?

Today we travel a bit east to Yorba Linda to find out...

20320 Herbshey Cir., Yorba Linda, CA 92887
--4 beds, 3 baths, 2,256 sqft

Using foreclosure.com as the source, foreclosure figures are listed first, pre-foreclosures are listed next, with the % of pre-foreclosures moving forward to foreclosures in parentheses. These are cumulative numbers. Special thanks to reader moqui for Aug '05 and June '06 data.

San Diego County
08/25/05: 83/3,087 (2.7%)
06/15/06: 354/4,382 (8.1%)
10/31/06: 998/4,983 (20.0%)
11/30/06: 1,304/5,245 (24.9%)
12/30/06: 1,251/4,637 (27.0%)
01/30/07: 1,475/4,760 (31.0%)
02/27/07: 1,879/5,008 (37.5%)

1135 PEACH AVE #A, El Cajon, CA 92021
--3 beds, 2.0 baths, 1,060 sqft on 2,613 sqft lot.
--08/2000: purchase price of $145,000 ($137/sqft).
--09/2004: purchased by REALTOR®/Owner for $350,000 ($330/sqft).
--10/2007: listed on MLS for $375,000 ($354/sqft).

One of our BMIT regulars golfer_x has been secretly working on his blog over the last couple of months. The Blog is Housing Kaboom and its main focus is the Inland Empire.

Not that anyone would want to live there, but golfer_x managed to find today something in San Jacinto for less than $90/sqft. (As one of golfer_x's reader puts it, calling it a city is an insult to cities. But hey, the less-than-$100/sqft-club got to start somewhere!)

665 Drake Dr, San Jacinto, CA 92582 (3,148 sqft)
--04/2005: purchased for $339,500.

Yes, this is in the more undesireable part of Lake Forest, the old El Toro to be exact. But price declines got to start somewhere...

This neighborhood reached its peak $/sqft with this home back in May of '05:
23235 Sky Dr., Lake Forest, CA 92630--4 beds, 2.5 baths, 2,255 sqft--05/2005: purchased for $705,000 ($313/sqft)

Dolphine Cove in Otay Mesa is a 121 home community developed by local builder Reynolds Communities in 2002. When the project opened in mid-2002, 1,800 sqft homes went for $350k while 3,000 sqft homes went for mid-$400k.

As the prices took off for outer space in 2003, these same homes went for between $450k to $550k. With the prices spiral up and up some more, prices reached north of $800k with prices per sqft closing in on $300/sqft.

We learned over the weekend how dangerous it is to purchase at a time of pricing free fall. Certainly Mr. Vazquez's $30k to $55k loss just after closing on his home bring to light the events happening in the inner city zone of San Diego.

But what about other inner-city-like areas in SoCal? Today, we journey to the other end of SoCal to Oxnard, where the boom caused a false spike of epic proportion. Here's the $/sqft on one Lombard Street in a newer part of Oxnard:Here's one example of the village idiot that bought at the very peak. Check out the almost $300k profit the original owner made between mid '03 to early '06. That's right folks, a 71% price spike in 2.5 years!

BMIT first featured this in-fill-detached condo development on the south side of Route 78 in San Marcos back in August of '07. As prices have come down further, it is time for another update.

Here's a buyer that ignored all of the leading indicators, the historic high inventory, the declining sales, and even the declining median price. A year and a half later, how do you comfort yourself if you made this small little mistake?

931 Mira Lago Way, San Marcos, CA 92078
--4 beds, 2.0 baths, 2,186 sq ft
--09/2006: purchased for $595,500 ($272/sqft)

In addition to the profiling of our real estate friends foreclosing away, the U-T story this past weekend also had some pretty scary numbers. For example, there were 1,305 actual foreclosures in January, this was up 257% in comparison to a year ago. With only 1,826 homes sold, the number of foreclosures in the county may soon overtake home sales.

What is even scarier is what's not published. These foreclosure numbers are actually lower than expected because of the 'postponement phenomenon.'

There's so many different angles I can use on this one. But the one I'm going to have to use is simply this: be one with the market, don't fight the flow of the bursting.

You know the market is bad, and it is going to get worse, and it will get a lot worse before it gets better. So don't even try to buy right now, just don't do it... even if the place makes you feel at peace with its 'zen-like asian/contemporary interior design.' Just don't do it...

977 Adirondack Place, Chula Vista, CA 91914
--4 beds, 5.0 baths, 3,884 sq ft
--05/2005: purchased for $1.389 million ($358/sqft)

Sales are down, foreclosures are up. If you have a home to sell, lower your price and get rid of it fast before you end up like this guy:

400 Whitby Gln, Escondido, CA 92027
--3 beds, 3.0 baths, 1,969 sq ft
--05/2006: purchased for $473,000 ($240/sqft)
--01/2008: listed for sale for $420,000 ($213/sqft)

You might say... "What's the big deal, ocrenter? the guy is only losing 11%, we seen much bigger losses than that."

Much less REALTOR®-related NODs in eastern Carlsbad this week. Only 3 out of the 9 new NODs filed between December 6th to 12th are connected to REALTORS®.

Everyone gets a second chance and JME is no different. Four years after a Chapter 7 BK filing, JME started back with his first home purchase in 2002. From then on, he made 4 additional purchases over the next 4-5 years. Two of which he sold for profit:

12313 VIA HACIENDA, EL CAJON, CA 92019
--3 beds, 2.5 baths, 1,588 sq ft
--12/2002: purchased for $350,000
--07/2007: sold for $505,000

2643 E BEYER BLVD, SAN YSIDRO, CA 92173
--4 beds, 2.5 baths, 1,532 sq ft
--09/2006: purchased for $465,000
--01/2007: sold for $510,000

With sales from these two homes, JME was looking at a cool $200,000 in profit. So how did he show off this nice $200k? Why an over 5,000 sqft McMansion in StoneBridge Estate of course. Unfortunately, looks like JME stretched a little bit too far and here we are, all three remaining homes he own are now past due on property taxes.

The Ranchos at Vistamonte in San Pasqual Valley consist of 80 homes in a gated community surrounded by rocky hills with dry bushes. Whether it was luck or good planning, the recent firestorm charred the entire surrounding hillside but spared the entire community, including a few homes in construction with bare 2 by 4's.

12721 Westly Lane, San Deigo - Scripps Ranch, CA 92131--4 beds, 3 baths, 3,390 sqft on 6,000 sqft lot with view of canyons.--08/2004: first purchased from builder for $883,000--06/2007: purchased by current owner for $1.375 million

12728 Westly Lane, San Diego - Scripps Ranch, CA 92131

Early in January BMIT showcased this 5,293 sqft Bressi Ranch mansion after we were tipped off to the shenanigan at this address. It turned out that even as the house was being auctioned off, its owner was still trying to rent it out at $6,500 a month with a $5,000 deposit.

According to the property manager, looks like our friend Jose pulled a fast one on her by insisting that "he was waiting for the banks to remove the NOD." Well, the NOD is gone alright, for the property is now a REO.
A few days ago Jim the Realtor alerted us to this property's listing on the MLS. So who's next in line to get shafted now? As it turns out, the builder is directly in the path of destruction.

Spelling mistakes on the MLS are not unusual, but this gives us a glimpse into the seller's desperation...43446 MONTE COURT, Temecula, CA 92592
--4 beds, 3.0 baths, 3,036 sq ft
--06/2003: purchased from builder for $378,500.
--10/2006: sold to current sucker for $508,000.
--10/10/2007: current sucker listed home for sale at $590,000.
--10/20/2007: realized he was delusional and reduced to $410,000.

We featured this street before, but April 1st seem like a good time to revisit how things are doing at Fools Gold Way.

1279 Fools Gold Way UNIT 1, Chula Vista, CA 91913
--2 beds, 2.0 baths, 1,071 sq ft
--02/2005: purchased from builder for $400,000 ($373/sqft)
--12/2007: back to bank as REO for $274,800
--12/2007: listed as REO for $249,000, reduced to $221,000 ($206/sqft)

Our most recent 'If Only I Waited...' post on Oxnard prompted one irate anonymous reader to write, "What's up with slamming Oxnard? There are places to live that are in worse shape than Oxnard..."

And we wholeheartedly agree!

Case in point, Bakersfield. Here we have a REO going for 33% less today compared to a year and a half ago...

12109 Trackside Dr., Bakersfield, CA 93312

4329 Vista Verde Way, Oceanside, CA 92057 --5 beds, 2.5 baths, 3,146 sq ft--03/2003: purchased from builder for $499,500--01/2008: REO to bank--03/2008: listed as REO for $499,900 ($159/sqft)

4S Ranch is really not a bad place to be. It's got the good schools, it's got the parks and the trails, as well as the convenience of the recently completed Town Center.
The initial master plan circa 2001-2003 was also quite decent. Some of the lot sizes were generous, the parks aplenty, and the sidewalks nice and wide. As for the mello roos? For a 3,000 sqft home at an asking price of roughly $500,000, the 0.5% mello roos only translate to roughly $2,500 per year.
But then the builders got greedy, and by 2005 they also realized the bubble was about to burst. To fully take adventage of the inflated prices at the peak of the bubble, the builders shrunk the lot sizes, reduced the number of parks, and increased the mello roos to 0.7-0.8%. And therefore the same 3,000 sqft home, but with an asking price of $850,000, ends up with $6,400 of mello roos per year.
But the mello roos is just a small part of this madness. Middle class folks, even upper-middle class folks, simply couldn't afford $850,000 for a tract home. It is that simple.
Let's see how one owner who bought at the top is doing these days...

There are a total of 9 NODs filed in the zipcode of 92009 in eastern Carlsbad in the first week of December.

6 of these NODs went to REALTORS®:

A month ago Jim the Realtor reminded us of the backlog of REOs using the Deutsche Bank as an example. In his survey back in December of '07, Jim found the following:

Here is the survey of 123 Deutsche REOs in North County:
--64 active listings
--18 pending listings
--41 homes not on market yet (33%)

Jim reported at the time that his foreclosing neighbor at the time was still living rent free 4 months after their foreclosure. Which reminds us of this gem in 4Closure Ranch...

The news out there just gets worse and worse. Nationally, we got the near-collapse of Bear Stearns. Regionally, there's a 39% freefall in sales and close to 20% drop in prices. Locally, we got skyrocketing foreclosures that are only getting worse. Needless to say, the bottom is a long way off.

The easy answer for potential homesellers is: get out while you can, price it right and sell it off. But as Jim the Realtor's most recent post demonstrates, potential sellers out there continue to ponder the questions of: to keep, to rent, or to dump?

To help these indecisive sellers make up their minds, BMIT went back to a post first written back in November of '06 and recently well covered by, once again, Jim the Realtor.

Someone once told me a story about a guy with two heads. In short, a guy had a tumor growing from the side of his neck. He kept thinking it'll go away but it just kept growing. The tumor was so big that it was the size of his head. He finally decided to go to the doctor and said to the doctor, "hey doc, I'm having problems swallowing!"

Now we saw the featured home from yesterday, with the bank acting as the leading market chaser over the last 5 months dropping prices from $439,000 to $330,000 ($104/sqft). Here are what a few of the neighboring homes on the same street are doing:

12206 TRACKSIDE DR, Bakersfield, CA 93312 (3,188 sqft)

You would think folks would have learned by now...

This home has quite a history here on BMIT. This is one of the homes that inspired the RSF Triumvirate to greatness as they made a cool half a million dollar on this one back in April of '06. It was also featured here in May of '07 as a fine example of an early payment default. The home at the time was listed by the bank as a REO with the lender taking a $332,000 loss within a single year.

After half a year as a REO, looks like an aspiring foreclosure shark decided to take the bait and went for it:

14444 Rock Rose, San Diego, CA 92127 (3,531 sqft)
--03/2003: purchased by the RSF Triumvirate for $849,000.

So Oxnard is a dump, but what about Thousand Oaks? Apparently they got the mountains, they are close to the ocean, they got Amgen, and everyone wants to live there...

Well, after months of speculation, the rumor regarding Amgen's layoffs finally came to fruition. With approximately 1,600 positions out of 8,200 gone, looks like we'll soon have 1,600 new listings in Thousand Oaks on top of the 865 currently listed for sale?

How will these newly laid off ex-Amgen employees price their homes? Hopefully the following will help them avoid becoming a market chaser: