The article below takes a year end snapshot of the foreclosure situation.  However, the California numbers deserve a deeper look.  Typically, properties move through the minimum 111 day non-judicial foreclosure process at a steady rate.  Moratoriums, loan mod programs and lender manipulation have created a clogging of the pipeline at the tail end.  Consider this:  Since September 1, 2009, 106.616 Notices of Default have been filed on title and are still pending as of today.  Assuming the loan is not reinstated, the Notice of Default stage lasts at least 90 days before a sale can be set.   While generally referred to as "pre-foreclosure", this is not accurate.  The Notice of Default or NOD formally starts the non-judicial foreclosure process.  True "pre-foreclosure" properties consist of tens of thousands of other loans that are in default, yet the lenders have delayed filing the Notice of Default for their own reasons. 

The log jam is occurring when it comes to the auction dates. Sales can happen on only 21 day notice.  But these days, Lenders are repeatedly setting sale dates, waiting to the last minute and then postponing the sales.  For example, there currently 35,198 pending sale dates in the next month that were originally filed in the first 6 months of 2009.  Another 41,216 of the upcoming sales were initiated in third quarter 2009.  Another 39,478 of sales have been initiated since the beginning of the fourth quarter of 2009.  All told, 116,492 properties, hundreds of thousands of Californians, have a foreclosure sale scheduled on their home tonight.   Another 106.616 properties are in the NOD pipeline.  Historically, NODs outnumber sale date properties [NTS] by an eight to one margin.  Still, hundreds of thousands of additional loans are in default and will soon follow into foreclosure unless a substantive political solution is crafted. 

Imagine what this is going to do to home prices when these properties flood the market.  Prices will be pushed down further as long term interest rates increase as Fannie Mae stops buying mortgage backed securities.

Source:  Foreclosureradar.com.

RealtyTrac® (www.realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released its Year-End 2009 Foreclosure Market Report™, which shows a total of 3,957,643 foreclosure filings -- default notices, scheduled foreclosure auctions and bank repossessions -- were reported on 2,824,674 U.S. properties in 2009, a 21 percent increase in total properties from 2008 and a 120 percent increase in total properties from 2007. The report also shows that 2.21 percent of all U.S. housing units (one in 45) received at least one foreclosure filing during the year, up from 1.84 percent in 2008, 1.03 percent in 2007 and 0.58 percent in 2006.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 349,519 U.S. properties in December, a 14 percent jump from the previous month and a 15 percent increase from December 2008 -- when a similar monthly jump in foreclosure activity occurred. Despite the increase in December, foreclosure activity in the fourth quarter decreased 7 percent from the third quarter, although it was still up 18 percent from the fourth quarter of 2008.

"As bad as the 2009 numbers are, they probably would have been worse if not for legislative and industry-related delays in processing delinquent loans," said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. "After peaking in July with over 361,000 homes receiving a foreclosure notice, we saw four straight monthly decreases driven primarily by short-term factors: trial loan modifications, state legislation extending the foreclosure process and an overwhelming volume of inventory clogging the foreclosure pipeline.

"Despite all the delays, foreclosure activity still hit a record high for our report in 2009, capped off by a substantial increase in December," Saccacio continued. "In the long term a massive supply of delinquent loans continues to loom over the housing market, and many of those delinquencies will end up in the foreclosure process in 2010 and beyond as lenders gradually work their way through the backlog."

A total of 632,573 California properties received a foreclosure filing in 2009, the nation's largest state foreclosure activity total and an increase of nearly 21 percent from 2008. After four straight month-over-month declines, California foreclosure activity in December increased nearly 9 percent from the previous month, but the state's fourth quarter foreclosure activity was still down 17 percent from the previous quarter.

Source:  http://www.realtytrac.com/contentmanagement/pressrelease.aspx?channelid=9&accnt=0&itemid=8333