Countrywide Financial REOs in Sacramento

A fellow by the name of Dimitris has started up a blog tracking Countrywide Financial's REO inventory, and I thought it would be interesting to see how CFC is doing here in Sacramento.

(For those of you who are interested, CFC currently posts a list of all the property they have repossessed due to foreclosures (REO). The list can be found here. Beware, the list takes a long time to load.)

Once I was aware of these data, I became very interested to discover what CFCs approach was for ridding itself of these houses. Boy, was I surprised.

According to Dimitris, CFC has 177 REOs in the Sacramento area. Running the addresses against my database yielded some startling results:

- Only 42 of the 177 were listed in the MLS as of March 31. (38 on March 24)
- 68 appear to be purchase defaults (purchased within the last four years)
- 109 appear to be refi defaults (purchased more than four years ago)
- On 29 of the 68, CFC is asking for a profit based on REO book value

Here is a typical example:

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8032 GOLDEN RING WAY ANTELOPE, CA 95843

Total Gain: $42,037 Percent Gain: 13.4% Asking Price: $354,900 Bedrooms:3 Baths: 2 Sq. feet:1622 Listing History: Down 15.5% from $419,900 On 2006-04-09 Down 4.1% from $369,900 On 2006-12-30 Down 2.5% from $363,900 On 2007-02-24 Previous Sales: Sold on 2004-04-13 for $294,500 Sold on 2006-12-01 for $312,863 MLS# 60134688 Google Maps Assessed Value Property Tax Bill

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Although this is a relatively small data set, it does betray an undercurrent in this market that has remained pretty well-hidden until recently. How many other REO holders are keeping back inventory? How long can they hold out before they're forced to sell? One thing's for sure: A third player is about to enter the Sacramento market in a big way.

As a companion piece to this post, I put together a bonus Countrywide Edition over on the Flippers In Trouble blog. Enjoy.