Asteroid - Wait until the bank sells them through an auction company like http://williamsauction.com. Judging by the property tax amounts on the properties that sold at the auction some were 50% off. There are other auction companies out there.

Jim’s getting rather bearish these days.

I have been lagging on doing some updates here but I will try to make up for it tonight. Below are some homes that were scheduled for foreclosure in Irvine for the past 30 days. If it says sold next to the address someone actually bought and the price listed is what they paid. We should watch the sold properties to see if they try to flip them because I saw an ad in the OCR today for a conference on how to get rich with foreclosures. If it says bank next to the address the bank took it back.
5 Roseleaf 92620 sold for $1.15mil.
3 Moonstone 92602 sold for $461k.
39 Kelsey 92618 bank for $786k.
19 Flowerbud 92603 bank for $505k.
15 Bolinas 92602 bank for $587k.
10 Sharpsburg 92620 bank for $670k.
1405 Elk Grove 92618 bank for $371k.
15 Pacific Crest 92602 sold for $791k.
159 West Yale Loop 92604 bank for $582k. It had NTS amount of $750k.
10 Van Buren 92620 bank for $337k.
There was a total of 40 scheduled the last 30 days, 6 were cancelled, 18 were postponed, 5 sold and 11 went back to the bank. That is a 40% ratio if you include the postponed homes and a 73% when you exclude the postponed homes on homes that received a NTS.
 

From BMIT:

Orange County

08/25/05: 19/4,028 (0.5%)

06/15/06: 152/5,194 (2.9%)

10/31/06: 182/3,094 (5.9%)

11/30/06: 269/3,308 (8.1%)

12/30/06: 331/2,800 (11.8%)

01/30/07: 398/2,890 (13.8%)

02/27/07: 491/3,051 (16.1%)

03/30/07: 613/3,261 (18.8%)

04/30/07: 956/3,368 (28.4%)

05/30/07: 1,239/3,804 (32.6%)

06/30/07: 1,536/3,890 (39.5%)

07/30/07: 1,490/4,092 (36.4%)

I hadn’t not realized the conversion factor had increased so dramatically. (the number of defaults that turn into foreclosures—in parenthesis). This is almost as bad as Riverside County.

Riverside County

08/25/05: 84/7,250 (1.2%)

06/15/06: 420/9,561 (4.4%)

10/31/06: 652/5,798 (11.2%)

11/30/06: 838/6,856 (12.2%)

12/30/06: 976/5,804 (16.8%)

01/30/07: 1,206/6,318 (19.1%)

02/27/07: 1,495/6,814 (21.9%)

03/30/07: 1,989/7,122 (27.9%)

04/30/07: 2,846/7,358 (38.7%)

05/30/07: 3,923/8,478 (46.3%)

06/30/07: 4,519/8,955 (50.5%)

07/30/07: 3,956/9,700 (40.8%)

These are very alarming numbers.

These are bad numbers. BMIT uses the cummulative total so what surprises me is the drop in REOs from last month. What caused that? Did the banks unload about 600 OC properties? Because now the OC recorders office has the trustee deeds as a drop down option and in the 16 business days of July there was 409. Considering that number will be higher once the info is available for the whole month and it takes about 6 months to convert to REO from NOD it would be a ratio over 50% since January had 847 NODS.
They also have added the notice of trustee sale as a drop down option. It takes a lot of time but now I can get the info for any year for each step of the process NOD, NTS and REO.  

http://www.countrywide.com/purchase/f_reo.asp
Now you can search by city. Searching just by the state of California gave too many results.

Irvine foreclosures and stats from Fidelity for the week ending 8/3:
9 Torrigiani 92606 REO $374k.
30 Crimson Rose 92603 SOLD $1.4mil.
21 Aspen Tree Lane 92612 REO $737k.
4642 Ranchgrove 92604 postponed to 8/14 NTS $637k.
141 West Yale Loop #3 92604 postponed to 8/15 NTS $451k.
49 Chantilly 92620 postponed to 8/20 BK NTS $561k.
12 Mayapple 92612 postponed to 8/31 NTS $655k.
30 Antique Rose 92620 postponed to 8/31 NTS $1.1mil.
59 Nightshade 92603 postponed to 9/5 BK NTS $536k.

Fidelity is processing less and less of the foreclosures. So I will be doing weekly updates.
But the July estimates for NODs is 1150-1250 (yeah yeah I am going with a range here but I was short by 100 last month) and foreclosures were 473.  NODs were up 3.8% to 12.8% and foreclosures were up 32% from last month.
I will do an update comparing these numbers to 1992 and the amount of housing stock tomorrow.

Does bidding at foreclosure auctions require payment in full with cash?

Are there any methods of obtaining loans for the auctions?

blackj,
You need to have cashiers checks. What you do is find what the minimum bid is and get a cashiers check for a penny over that amount. Then you get separate smaller cashiers checks for each bid increase up to what you are willing to spend. Sorry but there is no way to obtain a loan at the foreclosure auction other than maybe from Vinny but his rates are very high. Oh don’t miss a payment either.
You might want to check out http://www.foreclosureforum.com/index.html they have a plethora of info on how it all works.  

Hmmm…  2 Del Italia in the 92614.  A classic pink stucco box with crappy pics on the MLS.  Owner has a mailing address in Santa Monica.  Asking $819K (#      H07095957), bought in 8/05 for $750K, with 100% financing (thank you, Fremont).

And yet, curiously also listed at $789K (#    P579698).  What say you?

Not Irvine (sorry), but check out S494626, a short sale in Dana Point.
Price Reduced: 07/27/07—$915,000 to $849,000

Price Reduced: 08/01/07—$849,000 to $825,000

Price Reduced: 08/06/07—$825,000 to $815,000

Price Reduced: 08/09/07—$815,000 to $699,000
Somebody at the bank gave some thought to this credit crunch thingy.  The $849k price was ballpark with the other stuff in the area.  Oh noes!

That’s no short sale, previous sale as $650K.  At $699K, 6% commission, they have $7K to make the deal work.
Sadly, that 1998 price looks about right, maybe the 2001 price. 
This market as a long way to go if this thing was "valued" at $1M.  It’s a generic box of a house.

I did a radius search in Zip and there’s nothing similar in the area priced that low.  Maybe I didn’t look hard enough?  I agree that it’s still way overpriced.

Google searches on "Short Sale":

Cities of origin:

 
     
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        Sacramento, CA, USA
       
       
         
             
                 
             
         
       
       
         
     
     
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        Las Vegas, NV, USA
       
       
         
             
                 
             
         
       
       
         
     
     
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        Pleasanton, CA, USA
       
       
         
             
                 
             
         
       
       
         
     
     
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        Columbus, OH, USA
       
       
         
             
                 
             
         
       
       
         
     
     
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        Irvine, CA, USA
       
       
         
             
                 
             
         
       
       
         
     
     
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        Los Angeles, CA, USA
       
       
         
             
                 
             
         
       
       
         
     
     
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        Denver, CO, USA
       
       
         
             
                 
             
         
       
       
         
     
     
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        Salt Lake City, UT, USA
       
       
         
             
                 
             
         
       
       
         
     
     
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Another fun one.

Can you ever bid below the opening bid price?  There is an auction coming up in Costa Mesa with 15, yes 15 townhomes  to be auctioned off and the opening bids is 389,000-424,000 something like that. These homes were previously listed in the 600,000-800,000 range…they say you can get your own financing or they have lenders available all you need is  a 5,000 cashiers check for earnest money… what happens to the ones that go unsold?? This seems crazy I wonder what is causing this mass exodus and I wonder how many will sell…I am curious to know what happened there…
http://redcauction.com/index.php
 

oc - How funny is it that RSM is #1 and Irvine is #4 both are above SF and LA which have way more population?
ash - It looks like those are a condo conversion that went bad. I saw the ad in OCR and had the same thought as you WTF? I doubt you could bid less than the opening but if there are some that don’t sell and there will be you might try to see what you can do on a lower price. I will look into this and some of the others above tomorrow.

Thanks Graphix!
I am really just more curious about them then anything. So do you think the previous owners sued the builder and got their money back or something like that?  Because if people paid in the $700,000’s for those things WHOA I feel bad for them.  I read the on the REDCAuction site about what looked like a massive termite infestation so maybe the structures are about to collapse!  We drove by there yesterday and I was suprised to see cars in driveways, I was under the impression the whole place was deserted.  I am def. am interested to see the outcome.
Have a wonderful day!
 
ash
 

Not Irvine:
On March 15, Nordine filled out his first report on the property, a lengthy form requiring him to give GMAC comparable sales in the neighborhood, his recommendations for repairs and a suggested price.

He recommended $6,000 in cosmetic work and a low price to get out in front of the market. "Don’t overprice," he warned.
Page two is an illustration of how banks are consistently getting their pricing wrong.

Nordine filed another evaluation: "No problems, other than the cataclysmic market."
Less than a month later: "This is the worst market I have ever seen."
Ash - On the REDC site you can DL the preliminary title report and other various bits of info. In the prelim it shows that the company who bought it has a loan over $8.1 million. I don’t know what the sale amount was but I am tempted to find out because that could have been a construction loan to cover the costs of upgrades. The termite inspection report also includes the bid for the work and the completion report. The bid seemed extremely cheap for all the work that needed to be done. The cars you saw there are the four units that have already sold. I know that two of them are people involved with the company.  In the documents you can download you can find out who the investor is and then google him to find out he isn’t new at this. An economics degree and MBA from Harvard means this guy figured out the market has drastically changed and lets get these things sold. Without knowing what the purchase price was and what the four units that already sold for and if each of the 20 units sold for $400k it wouldn’t even cover the loan. I checked what is available in that price range and I had no clue how bad Costa mesa is suffering.
The website for the project  is here.

For posterity, the house from the article is here.

Sorry, but that place is a dump.  They want 390k for a place in that condition?  This market still has a LONG way to go.

I wouldn’t give 175k for it.

Just got an e-mail regarding another =33&show_hide=&dynamicCounter=&jsVenue=&totalVenue=4&stateIDLeft=IRVINE&countyID=&beds=&baths=&propertyAddress=&propertyZip=&venueCode=&lateAddition=&auctionID=H-005&check=&search=1&view=1&listPaging=25”]REDC auction.  LA/OC props on Aug 26th.  Two Irvine props: 62 Chula Vista and 71 Avondale.
Edit:  Oops.  Another thread on the topic here.  I thought those two had been auctioned already.

Graphix,
Thx for the info, I know, it is incredible how many properties are on the market in Costa Mesa right now..even with prices coming down they are still beyond WTF prices..There is another townhome on the auction block right across the street from the back bay..these townhomes are old and run down and priced in the high 500,000s I started watching Costa Mesa last summer and there are several homes still on the market  since 1 year ago or more. My favorite one is a scummy 2 bed condo (a converted apt) surrounded by old run down apts on  busy corner for $460,000 GMAFB!   How these people trying to sell at these prices when there are no buyers to be found right now is beyond me.  Thanks again for the info, fascinating stuff.
 
ashbobash