Over 500 properties were foreclosed upon in San Francisco over the past year, up 27 percent from 2011 and 10 percent higher than in 2010, the previous high-water mark for homes being taken back by the bank.

By our counts, roughly 41 percent of San Francisco foreclosures occurred in District 10 in 2012, down from 42 percent in 2011 and well below the 48 percent recorded in 2009 or the 58 percent recorded in 2008.

In terms of the current foreclosure pipeline, pre-foreclosure activity in San Francisco has fallen from 379 properties in October to 286 today, 36 percent of which are in District 10*. On a year-over-year basis, pre-foreclosure activity has fallen 55 percent with 642 properties in the pipeline at the end of 2011, 38 percent of which were in District 10.

The number of properties currently scheduled for auction in San Francisco has dropped 30 percent over the past three months, from 477 to 332 today (39 percent of which are in District 10 versus 44 percent three months prior), down from 555 a year ago (at which point 40 percent were in District 10).

Over the past year, roughly 69 percent of scheduled foreclosure auctions in San Francisco were cancelled, down one point from a 70 percent cancellation rate in 2011, 66 percent in 2010, 55 percent in 2009, 53 percent in 2008, and 49 percent in 2007.

*Editor’s Note: In an attempt to match and map two disparate data sets, we include 94124, 94134 and 94112 in “District 10,” which results in a slightly larger area than the District as defined by the San Francisco Association of Realtors.

2 thoughts on “Foreclosures In San Francisco Peaked In 2012, Set To Fall In 2013”
  1. I wonder if the elimination of the ‘required file review’ for 4 million loans from the April 2011 settlement referenced here might have a Metamucil-like effect on some of the pending cases. Evidently the 4 million loans include all those “Initiated, pending, or completed in 2009 or 2010”
    http://www.federalreserve.gov/consumerinfo/files/wyntk-foreclosure-review.pdf
    2010 is a fixed five-year-arm period after some of the worst vintage 2005 loans…

  2. I don’t think so. That’s because of the likely countervailing effect of the new foreclosure regulations, SB 900 and AB 278, going into effect today.
    From the L. A. Times in July when the bills passed, California lawmakers pass historic foreclosure protection:

    After years of distress in the housing and mortgage markets, during which lenders seized nearly a million California houses, legislators Monday sent a pair of Assembly and Senate bills to Gov. Jerry Brown designed to help financially troubled borrowers stay in their homes.

    The measures would outlaw so-called robo-signing — the improper or faulty processing of foreclosure documents — and would allow state agencies and private citizens to sue financial institutions, under limited conditions, for economic compensation and for additional civil damages of up to $50,000 if lenders willfully, intentionally or recklessly violate the law. No lawsuit could go forward if the bank or servicer first fixes the problem with documentation or procedures, according to the bills.

    …The banking and real estate industries opposed the foreclosure-prevention bills, calling them well-meaning but overly complicated and so legally ambiguous that they would spur frivolous lawsuits.

    It is crucial that “we don’t give borrowers and enterprising attorneys an opportunity to delay foreclosures at will,” said Dustin Hobbs, a spokesman for the California Mortgage Bankers Assn.

    Bankers also said the bills would increase real estate transaction costs, slow the housing recovery, tighten credit and lower home values.

    Of course, the “parade of horribles” described by the banking lobby isn’t going to come to fruition, but anybody who’s behind on a mortgage loan with the time (e.g. retirees, people drawing unemployment insurance payments) will now have plenty of tools with which to draw out the foreclosure process even more than it has been drawn out by banks reluctant to mark their loan portfolios to market.

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