Taking The Measure Of California Foreclosures And The Future Of California
What do California foreclosures mean for the Golden State in the future? Of course, this is a question that’s easy to ask but difficult to answer when it comes to a state like California because it’s been affected so hard by the recession as well as the issues in its real estate markets. A look at the future requires looking at how these foreclosures began to climb in the first place.
Like a lot of other states and regions in the country, the rate of foreclosures out in California began climbing as many people began to suffer the effects of an incipient recession (which started earlier out in California) and found that they couldn’t afford the homes they were in. Some of this is due to their speculating that it be able to get out of the market before it dropped, which didn’t happen.
Unfortunately, the recession that has hit the entire nation first broke out in California a few years ago and caught many home owners out there unawares. Sadly, many of these homeowners were sitting on initially-low mortgages that were tied to interest rate adjustments that soon led to monthly payments going through the roof.
Equally as unfortunate is the fact that many people began to look at homes as investment instruments rather than places they would live in for quite some time. They bought into properties that usually were increasing greatly in price within just a year so they bought much more of it than they really couldn’t afford, expecting they’d be able to get into and out of the market with a nice profit.
Naturally, like any boom-and-bust cycle (and real estate is no more immune to it than any other aspect of the broader economy) the bust eventually occurred. Add in the fact that cultural biases against going into foreclosure seem to be melting away, and it’s easy to see how the rate of CA foreclosures soon begin to take off with a vengeance that frightened some economists.
The state of California, which already was restricted from taking advantage of much of that boom due to Proposition 13 — an initiative passed several decades ago which restricted the rate of taxes that could be excised on a property — was hurt badly by the decline in home values and the increase in foreclosures. And the state is still struggling with what to do about the CA foreclosures rate.
The first thing that the state probably should try to do is stabilize the foreclosure rate and prevent it from increasing any further, and the federal government has been helping in that regards with a number of innovative programs that might help. Getting the word out to many California property owners, though, has been tough as has been getting them to forestall or put off foreclosure as a first, rather than last, resort.
CA foreclosures and the rate at which they’ve increased is a natural consequence of a wildly exuberant economic cycle that eventually had to move into a bust period. Add in that California as a state is restricted in what it can do in terms of property taxes on homes and land in California and it’s easy to see that the state will really need to put together a comprehensive package to deal with the issue.
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