Let’s look at some numbers on this beautiful almost Spring morning:
We have a very energetic market in Northeast Los Angeles. In Eagle Rock 90041 since the beginning of the year, almost as many properties have closed escrow as have been listed. When you add in pending sales, you can see that we are quickly selling off the inventory. The sales numbers are moving almost as strongly in the other two zip codes which include all of Highland Park, Glassell Park, Mount Washington and Sagamore Park. At this rate, low inventories could continue throughout this year. Since this is a supply and demand business, if the demand keeps up at this rate, we will continue to have multiple offers and some increase in prices.

From the Combined LA/Westside Multiple Listing Service
The questions are:
• Will the demand keep up?
• Are first-time buyers driving the market?
• Will they put on the brakes when the tax credit goes away on April 30?
What are your thoughts?

I just retweeted Sean O’Toole’s Foreclosure Radar report for January, 2010. If you don’t receive my Tweets or Facebook updates, the link to his video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6nhFHMYn1k&feature=youtu.be&a. While I think that Sean has the most intelligent understanding of the California foreclosure market of anyone out there, I caution you to remember that these are figures for the entire state, not your local market.
I have been looking at the foreclosure figures for Northeast Los Angeles, and the one fact that leaped out at me was that a large number of the Notice of Trustee Sale dates are being postponed month by month. In other words, a number of properties scheduled to be sold at auction in February are now showing sale dates in March. From data in the Multiple Listing Service, I have seen that several of these have been in protracted short sale negotiations. Some of these delays are due to bankruptcy filings. I’ve noticed that a number of these properties have been in default on and off over the last several years. This can be for all kinds of reasons, mostly due to some kind of financial distress because of the large mortgage amounts owed on the properties. If these properties could be sold for enough to pay off the mortgage debt, they would have been sold by now.