Negative numbers often conjure up negative images for me.
-40 degrees…means you are freezing your hiney off in some insanely cold part of the country.
-$50 means you just bounced a check at the local grocery store.
You know sometimes a negative number is a good thing….
-10 pounds…there aren’t too many people in the country that wouldn’t sign up for that.
-11% drop in Salem Oregon foreclosure notices…give me more of that, pretty please. I’ll be nice…well, I’ll try anyway. No guarantees.
I don’t think it is a big secret that foreclosures have been pulling home prices downward. It isn’t a secret, right? I don’t want my special real estate agent card revoked because I gave out classified information here…BUT for the first time in 5 quarters, the number of notice of defaults dropped by 11%, at least according to the information I get from Fidelity National Title Company.
Now that number is still…oh, say…four times more than normal, but a drop now means that in a year from now we will see fewer of these properties hitting the market. With our drop in unemployment here in Salem from the 11’s to the 10’s, it is possible that this downward trend will continue.
Right now 12.2% of Salem Oregon listings on the WVMLS are designated as distressed properties (ie a short sale or foreclosure) and 11.1% of properties that sold in Salem last month were distressed properties. It will take several quarters to bring these numbers back to normal, but it is nice to think of the possibility that we might be past the worst of those foreclosure numbers. Unfortunately, one quarter doesn’t make a trend and we’ll have to see what happens in the next two quarters.