At yesterday’s staff meeting, we got a heads-up that, in all likelihood, the foreclosure picture in Central Oregon is about to change again. Earlier this year, Oregon saw a significant decrease in the number of foreclosure filings this spring. Meanwhile, the overall inventory of distressed-homes (bank-owned properties and short sales) here has decreased, buying activity has increased and the market seems to have stabilized for the summer.
Now, it appears as if we can expect a large number of REO properties to hit the residential market in Central Oregon in the near future.
How do we know? A quick scan of the “Upcoming Sales” on the ReconTrust website is a good indicator. A subsidiary of Bank of America, ReconTrust provides the banking behemoth with “default management services.” In other words, it handles the trustee auctions that occur after a home has been repossessed by BOA. Homes that don’t sell at auction are then listed for sale on MLS and marketed to the masses.
Anyway, as of today there are 688 properties in Deschutes County scheduled to go to auction, plus 104 in Crook County, 49 in Jefferson County, and 118 in Klamath County. Add it up, and we’re potentially looking at almost a thousand new REOs out there.
Another noteworthy thing to keep in mind about the upcoming foreclosures: Many of these properties have been vacant for months (some, a year or more!) –- and Central Oregon experienced a very long, very cold, very wet winter. That means that buyers of this new batch of bank-owned properties should be prepared to encounter many more maintenance issues than previous buyers may have been experienced.
As a result, expect to see a significant increase in the number of FHA 203(k) loans. I’ll elaborate on that further in a future post.
