Orange County home sales for less than a residence’s total debt increased 33.8% in January from the year before, Southern California Multiple Listing Service figures show.
By JEFF COLLINS
Mortgage Insider
March 1, 2010
The listing service reported that 487 of January’s deals were “short sales” — or sales in which the purchase price is less than mortgage balance. That’s nearly 28% of all Orange County resales traded through the MLS.
At the same time, bank-owned foreclosed homes sold that month fell nearly two-thirds from the previous January to 293 transactions — a 62% drop.
In January 2008, nearly 800 bank-owned homes were sold, accounting for half of all homes sold through the MLS. This past January, they made up 16.8%.
The combined total for all types of “distressed sales” accounted 49.3% of all MLS deals this past January, compared to 77% a year earlier. The SoCal MLS reported that distressed sales totaled 862 in January, down 27.6% from the previous January’s total of nearly 1,200.
Here are the SoCal MLS figures for distressed sales for the past 13 months:
| Month | ShortSales | BankOwned | Other | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan | 364 | 772 | 55 | 1,191 |
| Feb | 294 | 658 | 24 | 976 |
| Mar | 346 | 772 | 43 | 1,161 |
| Apr | 392 | 701 | 33 | 1,126 |
| May | 401 | 684 | 43 | 1,128 |
| Jun | 468 | 595 | 33 | 1,096 |
| Jul | 448 | 595 | 35 | 1,078 |
| Aug | 459 | 495 | 39 | 993 |
| Sep | 477 | 412 | 23 | 912 |
| Oct | 530 | 443 | 37 | 1,010 |
| Nov. | 405 | 361 | 30 | 796 |
| Dec. | 547 | 372 | 37 | 956 |
| Jan | 487 | 293 | 82 | 862 |
