Foreclosures in the Greater San Fernando Valley jumped an annual 571percent in September and sales sank to the lowest level in 19 years as the residential real estate market’s free fall intensified, a research center said Monday, the Los angeles Daily News reports.
Last month, 302 home and condominium owners from Glendale to Calabasas lost their properties because they could not make the mortgage payment, up from 289 in August, said the San Fernando Valley Economic Research Center. A year ago, just 45 properties were lost to foreclosure.
For all of the third quarter, 854 homes were foreclosed on, the center said. Foreclosures peaked at 1,854 in the third quarter of 1996. The center’s records date back to 1988.
“If there is any good news in this report, it’s maybe that the rate of foreclosures is starting to slow down,” said CSUN professor Daniel Blake, the center’s director.
He bases this on the fact that notices of default, the first part of the foreclosure process, dropped to 874 in September from 1,035 in August.
But they did increase 152.6percent from a year ago, indicating that the foreclosure problem won’t soon abate.
Blake also said it will take several more months to see whether default notices continue to trend down.
