Los Angeles foreclosure lists continued to grow as the unemployment rate in the area continued to rise, based on data from a foreclosure tracking firm.
A total of 69,403 households in the Los Angeles, Santa Ana and Long Beach metro area received foreclosure filings in the July to September quarter, representing 1.6 percent of all residential units in the area. One in every 63 households was in default or in foreclosure, putting the Los Angeles metro area 23rd in a ranking of the 203 largest metro areas in the U.S. based on rates of foreclosure.
Leo Nordine, who specializes in lender-repossessed homes, said that the number of foreclosures could have been higher if there were no federal, state and bank programs preventing the entry of many homes into foreclosure.
Nordine said that his foreclosure sale business has not been as busy as over the past 12 months. What he has observed though are the rising number of high-end homes in Los Angeles foreclosure lists and the falling number of move-up buyers. He added that buyers who typically sell their homes and then buy houses priced higher than $500,000 have been disappearing because of the still high number of job losses.
The unemployment rate in Los Angeles County rose to 12.7 percent in September as more employees in the movie and tourism industries got laid off. The rate was higher than the August rate of 12.2 percent and much higher than the September 2008 rate of 8.3 percent. Over the past 12 months, over 210,000 employees throughout the county lost their jobs.
Nonetheless, the number of payroll jobs rose in September by 19,000 from August due to the return of teachers to their jobs, but the increase was offset by job losses in the hospitality, leisure and film sectors. Overall, payroll jobs rose slightly to almost 3.9 million jobs from August.
However, compared to September 2008, payroll jobs declined by 4.1 percent or 164,000 jobs, with the manufacturing industry eliminating the most number of jobs. Losses in the retail, professional, business services and construction ranked next.
Because of the job losses, analysts in the Los Angeles area projected another wave of foreclosures, but so far, foreclosure activity has not been as fast as expected, although the number of defaults and actual foreclosures are still high.
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