Homeowners in distress are creating opportunities for others.
As more homeowners have trouble making mortgage payments, new services are popping up to alert people looking for foreclosed properties to buy.
As of March 6 this year, trustee deeds, which transfer ownership of property in default, total 105 for Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties, an exponential increase from this time last year, when nine such deeds were recorded. Notices of default and properties in foreclosure have doubled in the three counties overall, with rates in Santa Cruz lower than in Monterey. A default notice is filed after homeowners are delinquent on mortgage payments.
Liese Varenkamp, owner of the Santa Cruz Record legal newspaper, is about to launch a new online information service, Investors Edge, catering to people seeking information about foreclosed properties in Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties.
Entrepreneur Sean O'Toole plans to launch ForeclosureRadar.com, an online information service that will track foreclosure auctions statewide, according to his publicist, Laura Ness of High Performance Marketing of Los Gatos. The charge for the service: $49.95 a month.
As the new services make their debut, foreclosure activity may be leveling off.
Vern Johnson, who has been posting foreclosure notices from Boulder Creek to Big Sur, has been conducting auctions at 1:30 p.m. most days on the steps of the county governmental center. On Tuesday, he had 15 foreclosed properties scheduled for auction in Monterey compared to two in Santa Cruz.
"Yesterday, I only got one new posting," Johnson said. "It's been six or seven"
| Soquel attorney William Purdy said "foreclosure rescue scammers" are afoot in Santa Cruz County, offering loans that are too good to be true to distressed homeowners. He warned people who receive a notice of default to act quickly, by negotiating with the lender or consulting an attorney. |
Peter Ogilvie of First Residential Mortgage Corporation in Santa Cruz and president-elect of the California Association of Mortgage Brokers sees a need for changes in mortgage industry practices in light of the increase in defaults and foreclosures.
He will be in Washington, D.C., this week to talk to legislators and consumer advocates about these very issues.
Contact Jondi Gumz at jgumz@santacruzsentinel.com
Signs of trouble
These are the county statistics from the Santa Cruz Record as of March 6.
2007 2006 2007 2006
Santa Cruz Monterey
Notices of default: 135 82 353 129
Foreclosured property 60 16 146 35
Source: www.santacruzrecord.com
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