Foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac says California is flanked by Georgia and Arizona when it comes to posting the country's highest percentage of foreclosure sales.
RealtyTrac's Daren Blomquist says 36% of all residential sales in California during the third-quarter were foreclosure-related.
"Despite a decrease in the raw counts of foreclosure sales in California, down 12% from a year ago, we still see a persistently high percentage of sales that are occurring are in some stage of foreclosure."
Just a couple of years ago, about half of all homes sold were
foreclosures.
"We're down from that but still this 36% of all sales is
well above what you'd expect to see in a normal, healthy market.
Really, honestly you'd expect to see less than 5% of all sales be
foreclosure related."
Blomquist says non-foreclosure short-sales in California went
up by 20% on a year-over-year basis.
Several Northern California cities still lead the country in
sales of foreclosure-related homes.
"Modesto has the highest with…and it still have over 50% of
its sales foreclosure related - 54%...Stockton is number two with
53%...you also have Sacramento in there with 40% of all sales in
the third-quarter were foreclosure related."
…that puts Sacramento at number four on the list of metro
areas nationwide with the highest foreclosure-related sales.