Einzige

I haven’t posted one of these things in a while, so I figured it was about time. The big peak was in March, with a total of 10,725 that month. October’s total was 6,618. <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 260px;” src="/images/09OctNTRs.jpg" border=“0” alt=““id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398553297848650530” /> Lippard (2009-10-31): The stimulus tax credit ends at the end of the year. I suspect we're going to see it climb again next year. ...

As Jim pointed out here, Maricopa County saw another record month for pre-foreclosures - though AZ Central’s count is different than mine. I can only tell you what I get from the recorder’s office (which was 7286). <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/08AugNTRs.jpg" border=“0” alt=““id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5245866439526765986” />

I bought my first house 10 years ago, in July, 1998. Prior to the purchase I was living in a nearby apartment complex, paying $435/month for a 2-bedroom, 1 bath. I (over)paid $86,500 for the house, putting 3% down, so my monthly payments, at roughly $600, were ~35% higher than my rent–a reasonable premium to me, considering I’d suddenly be living and building equity in “my own place." Today, zillow.com says the house is worth about $192,000, and monthly payments at 3% down would come to just under $1300/month. By comparison, you can still rent that 2 bedroom apartment for around $600. Doing the same math again, I don’t think I’d come to the conclusion that the “ownership premium” is really worth it. Would you? You might be wondering what my little story has to do with July’s notices of trustee’s sales–which, at 6412, as you can see from the graph, were lower than June’s. Bush’s housing bailout bill recently became law, which may mean that we have just passed the peak for home foreclosures–and soon we may even see a stop to falling home prices. Great news for current home owners, but, as my personal anecdote suggests, not-so-great news for housing affordability in general. The bailout essentially is a subsidy to current home owners at the expense of future home owners. Because it will prop up current prices beyond where they would have naturally fallen, housing affordability will remain low, encouraging the spawning of all sorts of new government programs to help address “the affordability gap” (or some such wealth-transfer justificationist nonsense)–making money cheaper than it actually is, which will in turn encourage sellers to raise their prices still further while at the same time creating homeowners out of people who probably aren’t fiscally responsible enough to be ones. Is this sounding familiar, yet? As a non-homeowner who is making twice what he made in 1998 but would have an extremely hard time justifying paying $1300/month to own a crappy house, I would have preferred if Congress could’ve just left well enough alone. ...

After I counted up May’s 6416 notices of trustee’s sales in Maricopa county I took a look at the graph for May of 2007 and I just had to laugh. If you’ll recall, May of 2007 was Phoenix’s break-out month for pre-foreclosures. It was the month when the real estate bubble showed us that it wasn’t an also-ran, trouncing the dot bomb’s NTR record by almost 300. Yet here we are a year later and last May’s 2009 notices seem almost like something to pine for. Notice also the Gaussian descriptive statistics I was naïvely including with my posts back then. If we were to take those number seriously - in particular the standard deviation - then we’d be forced to conclude that May 2008’s number should essentially be impossible. Clearly foreclosure statistics are not Gaussian. <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/08MayNTR.jpg" border=“0” alt=“Click for large version"id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5209193472323903762” />

<img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/08AprNTR.jpg" border=“0” alt=““id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196577505470399650” />Based on this chart, Ray Kurzweil would undoubtedly predict that in late 2009 or early 2010, Maricopa County will reach its foreclosure singularity - the moment at which all homes will simultaneously be served notices of foreclosure and beyond which it is impossible to predict what will happen. April’s 6184 notices were yet another unprecedented high. Historical Comments Michael Norton (2008-05-05): Perhaps Doug Adams would call it the "trustee sale event horizon"? ...

Maricopa County had another record month for notices of trustee’s sales. 5370 pre-foreclosure notices sent out to Phoenix area home owners… Remember that last month’s figure was 5048 notices, while the number of homes sold in February was only 3448… These numbers, not surprisingly, continue to exert downward pressure on home prices in the valley. January’s median price of $220,000 fell to $213,800 in February…

It looks like I picked the wrong month to slack on an update to my graph of Phoenix area pre-foreclosures, as January’s notices of trustee’s sales climbed to an amazing 5336! That’s 1461 higher than December’s number, and when you consider that last January’s number was 1623, and that the peak seen by the bursting of the Tech bubble (which, by the way, is hardly noticeable in this graph), in January, 2003, was 1738 I think it becomes clear that we are witness to something rather scary. February’s number dropped to a measly 5048. <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/0802NTR.jpg" border=“0” alt=“Click for full size"id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5174474898444172498” /> ...

I figured I’d present the foreclosure notice data a little differently, to make it easier visually to compare it with Maricopa County’s median price and sales data. If you’re interested in seeing the numbers prior to 2001, check out last month’s post. And, by the way, if you somehow found your way to this page via a Google search for “Phoenix foreclosures” or something similar and it’s not currently December of 2007, you’d do well to click here so you can see the latest information. November was yet another record month for notices of trustee’s sales in the Phoenix area, with 3543 filed. <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/07NovNTR.png" border=“0” alt=“Maricopa County Notices of Trustee’s Sales, Jan 2001 to Nov 2007"id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139582868522735842” />Meanwhile, home sales are the lowest they’ve been since January of 2001. Note that the graph’s latest data point is from October, since ARMLS is not quick to update its stats, but I can’t imagine that November’s numbers are going to be any better, since traditionally it’s a slow month, regardless. <img style=“display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;” src="/images/sales.png” border=“0” alt=“Phoenix area home sales data"id=“BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139583401098680562” />

Maricopa County’s Notices of Trustee’s Sales continued their record pace in October, totaling 3459… …and finally we’re seeing the effects of this downward pressure on the metro Phoenix median home price (data courtesy ARMLS)… I might be persuaded to buy a place again in six months or so.

Finally, we see a break in the past year’s almost relentless upward trend in Maricopa County’s Notices of Trustees Sales… September’s total was 2836 - well off from last month’s high. Something tells me, though, that this is not the start of a new trend downward, just yet. Oh, I should note that I’ve changed the graph this month so that the vertical axis starts at zero instead of 400.