For months, San Diego County’s housing market has been ravaged by thousands of foreclosures in low-priced neighborhoods, where families saw their American dreams vanish as their subprime loans went bad.
Now, according to figures released yesterday, the pain is lessening in those areas while becoming more acute in high-priced neighborhoods.
MDA DataQuick reported 985 foreclosure sales in San Diego County last month, up 9.1 percent from April but off 36.7 percent from year-ago levels. Notices of default, the first step in the foreclosure process, totaled 3,059, a drop of 9.3 percent from April and 2.5 percent from May 2008.
But in certain expensive areas, there were record levels of defaults.
Point Loma, Solana Beach and Rancho Santa Fe and other expensive areas reported numbers several times the level seen a year ago, a sign that the trend may continue upward.
For example, in Carmel Valley, where the median sale price this year is $676,500, there were 44 default notices in May, up from 14 in May 2008. May sales in the coastal community east of Del Mar totaled 54.
“There’s more distress in the high end, and we’ll just have to watch to see if it continues to build,” DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage said.
He and other observers said high-end owners once had the resources to resist defaults and foreclosures, but the recession is reducing their income and investments.
As the middle and upper tier of the market sees more sales of distressed homes, even at a discount, the overall county median price is likely to go up as these properties offset sales at the bottom end, LePage said.
“I think we will see more pain and more foreclosures in the upper end,” said San Diego real estate broker Gary Kent. “Some neighborhoods like La Jolla and Del Mar were almost unaffected by foreclosures, but now there will be some effect.”
read more from the San Diego Union Tribune…
By Roger Showley, Union-Tribune Staff Writer
