NOTICES OF DEFAULT NEARLY DOUBLE
California State Senate Bill 1137 Fails to Reduce Foreclosures
Discovery Bay, CA, January 13, 2009 – ForeclosureRadar (www.foreclosureradar.com), the only
website that tracks every California foreclosure with daily auction updates, today issued its California
Foreclosure Report for December 2008 and year-end summary. Notices of Default have rebounded
from the stall caused by California State Senate Bill 1137, which temporarily slowed foreclosures by
imposing new requirements on lenders. With 42,421 filings in December, Notices of Default are back to
the record levels reached in the second quarter of 2008, nearly doubling the 21,557 Notices of Default
recorded in November. Notice of Trustee Sale filings were relatively flat month-over-month, however
Notices of Trustee Sale are filed an average 116 days after the Notice of Default so a rebound in the
coming months is likely.
California saw unprecedented foreclosure activity in 2008, with 249,940 properties sold at
trustee sale auction – representing $107.8 Billion in combined loan value. Of those properties 96.4%
went back to the lender after no bid was received from a third-party.
High-level findings for 2008 include:
o There were a total of 437,955 Notices of Default filed in 2008, an increase of 56 percent over the
279,821 Notices of Default filed in 2007.
o Notice of Trustee Sale filings increased 122.9 percent over 2007 rising from 157,273 filings in
2007 to 350,514 filings in 2008. Of the Notices of Trustee Sale filed in 2008, 16 percent remain
scheduled for sale at auction, 17 percent have been cancelled, and 66 percent were sold at
auction.
o Properties sold at auction increased by 158 percent by volume, and 179 percent by combined
loan value. Lenders took back a total of 241,093 properties, with a combined loan value of
$103.9 Billion.
o The amount lenders discounted properties at auction from the outstanding balance increased
from an average discount of 16.1 percent in January to 39.5 p