Sizing Up The Rate Of California Foreclosures And How California May Fare
A look at California foreclosures and the future future of California is easier looked at than assessed. This is especially when it comes to the Golden State of California, because the state has been so affected by the downward turn in the broader economy as well as in its real estate market. Answering it, therefore, requires looking at how the foreclosure rate went up in the first place.
Much like the rest of the country, foreclosures out in the Golden State began to occur as people who held property — either as an investment or who bought homes they maybe shouldn’t have — began to find that they couldn’t afford the payments on those properties any longer. Many people in California were speculating that they’d be able to get into and out of the market with a profit.
Unfortunately, the recession that has hit the entire nation first broke out in California a few years ago and caught many home owners out there unawares. Sadly, many of these homeowners were sitting on initially-low mortgages that were tied to interest rate adjustments that soon led to monthly payments going through the roof.
Equally as unfortunate is the fact that many people began to look at homes as investment instruments rather than places they would live in for quite some time. They bought into properties that usually were increasing greatly in price within just a year so they bought much more of it than they really couldn’t afford, expecting they’d be able to get into and out of the market with a nice profit.
They fail to take into account that every boom is eventually followed by a bust and that the trick would be in timing the market. However, the bust happened quite suddenly and many people sitting in the real estate market or living in a home they thought they’d be up to sell for profit were caught out. The rate of CA foreclosures, though, this time is also partly due to the willingness of people to go straight to foreclosure, which is a new phenomenon.
It doesn’t help that California was somewhat limited in what it could do to bank money or fund mechanisms that might have been able to deal with this before hand because the property tax revenue it was collecting was artificially limited by the famous Proposition 13, the famous anti-property tax initiative. Once the decline in home values began it was inevitable that the rate of CA foreclosures would go up.
Of course, everybody now says that California needs to be working hard to get control of the rate of foreclosure in order to keep it from increasing any further. The government at both the state and federal level has been trying to assist with that by offering certain programs that help with loan modification and avoidance of foreclosure. Owners also need to quit looking at foreclosure as a first option rather than a last.
It would seem that the rate of CA foreclosures is almost a natural side effect of the speculative real estate activity that had been occurring for at least a decade out in California. Unfortunately, the state has only a few tools it can use at present due to its own budgetary issues brought on at least in part by Proposition 13. Hopefully, though, it’ll be able to do something more comprehensive in the near future.
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