Sacramento County's lowest-income neighborhoods continue to take the toughest, most destabilizing punches of the region's two-year foreclosure crisis, says a new report from the Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency.
And it's getting worse.
"Foreclosures are continuing to increase," said Joel Riphagen, SHRA redevelopment analyst. "The common denominator of the hardest-hit areas is they are low-income."
The SHRA's third-quarter 2008 report says sales prices in some neighborhoods have fallen almost by half over the past year. And a pileup of bank repos has also raised stakes for county code enforcers trying to stave off blight.
"What we don't want to happen is when these homes become vacant, the outside becomes dilapidated and run-down," said Sacramento County Supervisor Jimmie Yee, who represents several south Sacramento neighborhoods struggling with foreclosures.
Sacramento County has seen banks repossess 14,054 homes the first nine months of this year – 5,643 in July, August and September alone, according to MDA DataQuick. That's 73.5 percent of the capital region's total. SHRA, which doesn't count homes bought at auction, showed 4,670 third-quarter foreclosures.
By any count, the highest concentrations are in the south Sacramento neighborhoods of Meadowview and Parkway, and North Sacramento's North Highlands and Foothill Farms. Foreclosures are also becoming more frequent and concentrated in Natomas, says the SHRA report.
All are neighborhoods targeted for $31.9 million in federal foreclosure relief expected within months, said Riphagen.
Sacramento County Supervisor Roger Dickinson, whose North Sacramento and Natomas district had the county's highest third-quarter foreclosure tally, at 1,358, said the phenomenon has "both a financial and a psychological impact."
"When you have a large number of foreclosures in a relatively small or confined geographic area, the market starts to look at the area as struggling and less desirable," he said. "That can have an impact on the property values of people who are still there."
Consumer activists have charged that lenders seeded many of these troubled neighborhoods during the housing boom with complicated and risky adjustable-rate mortgages. Borrowers often believed they could refinance when their homes rose in value. Then values fell, blocking exits from loans that adjusted to higher monthly payments.
Now, many of the region's lowest-income neighborhoods have seen huge spikes in sales as home prices have fallen. Investors are snapping up homes formerly occupied by owners with intent of renting them. More than one-third of Sacramento home sales in October were priced below $160,000. Three-fourths of county sales were of foreclosed homes repossessed by banks, the Sacramento Association of Realtors reported Friday.
Some SHRA findings:
• Eight in 10 properties sliding toward foreclosure were owner-occupied. The rest were investor-owned rentals.
• The top loan servicers for foreclosed properties in the county during the quarter were Bank of New York, US Bank, Deutsche Bank and Washington Mutual (now a part of JPMorgan Chase).
• The vast majority of foreclosures stemmed from loans made in 2005 and 2006.
The SHRA report comes as some of the nation's biggest banks have announced foreclosure moratoriums and stepped-up efforts to keep people in their homes. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed a 90-day foreclosure moratorium in California while the federal government is pressing lenders to rewrite loans to make payments more affordable.
Dickinson said Friday that he wishes it had started sooner, "but at least it's occurring now."
Area efforts also continue to steer more borrowers to loan counseling. The SHRA has scheduled a foreclosure prevention workshop Thursday at the Pannell Meadowview Community Center in south Sacramento. Hours are 2 to 8 p.m. For more information, call (916) 440-1399, ext. 1226.
Call The Bee's Jim Wasserman, (916) 321-1102. Read his blog on real estate, Home Front, at www.sacbee.com/blogs.
