Star-spangled camper … a homeless man in a temporary tent city in Sacramento, California Photo: Getty

The continuing fear of job losses in the US means consumers are saving rather than spending – denying fuel to the retail engine of the economy.

EVEN in the affluent US capital, a city that has been relatively insulated from the worst recession since Great Depression, the beggars are visible. They sleep on the street just a block from the White House and at major intersections they wait for fellow Americans to come to a standstill and spare a dollar.

Many carry signs telling their personal story: laid off, returned Iraq vet, lost the house and the job, got sick and no health care.

A year after the US financial markets went into a tailspin, its economy is showing tentative signs of a weak recovery but unemployment continues to rise, though not at the terrifying rate of six months ago, when 600,000 people a month were joining the jobless lines.

Something else has happened in America as well. The era of easy credit that fuelled two decades of mostly spectacular growth is over, not just on Wall Street. The American consumer has started saving. Mortgages, personal loans and even credit cards are harder to get. Consumer credit was down 5.2 per cent annualised between April and June. Revolving credit, which includes credit cards, was down 9 per cent.

The turbocharged consumer market that powered the American economy since the 1980s has run out of puff. These combined, related factors – people don’t spend if they fear for their jobs – are likely to define the US recovery. It will be slow and painful.

The jobless rate rose to 9.7 per cent in August and is expected to peak above 10 per cent in the months ahead. It is already there in at least 15 states and some economists predict it could be five years before the US economy generates enough jobs to overcome those lost and to employ the new workers entering the labour force.

This fear of job losses is likely to keep consumers’ wallets in their pockets. Without a return to spending – retail sales make up 70 per cent of the US economy – it seems inevitable the recovery will be slower than in the past.

So what are the positives? Retail sales have shown signs of improvement and the federal stimulus package is working its way into the economy.

The retail figures for August were up 2.7 per cent, the biggest jump since January 2006, and vehicle sales up 11.9 per cent.

Excluding vehicles, retail sales were up 1.1 per cent – the comparable figure in July was a 0.6 per cent decrease – but the boost was due in part to higher petrol prices at convenience stores. Most analysts are cautious about popping the champagne corks too early and will wait for a stronger spending trend to emerge.

In the housing market – which helped spark the crisis – there are tentative signs of stabilisation. Home foreclosures dipped slightly in August from July but are still 18 per cent above a year ago. The highest foreclosure rate is in Nevada, with one house in 62.

On home prices, the Case-Shiller Index has shown increases for May and June after 37 months of decline. The number of home sales has risen too.

”The only doubts about it are the market is rather abnormal now with all these foreclosure sales,” said Robert Shiller, who helped develop the index.

Falls in house prices have been huge – in some markets as much as 50 per cent. Many Americans, perhaps a quarter of those with mortgages, owe more than their homes are worth.

The Obama Administration’s ability to stimulate the economy further is severely curtailed by its huge budget deficits – and Congress has run out of patience with financial bail-outs.

“I don’t think we are out of the woods yet,” President Barack Obama said this week. “We need to be careful about taking the crutches away from the patient too early.”

It’s little wonder the ball room is full of shell-shocked building industry types looking for any kind of good news at all. I took notes of both speakers and will offer somewhat of a transcript here of what was said about the national home building scene first, and then the regional scene. The forum was sponsored by the Propane Education and Research Council.

(Check back a little later, we are expecting to be able to upload a PowerPoint here to go along with this)

Boyce Thompson, editorial director of Hanley Wood’s fleet of builder magazines, and editor of Big Builder Magazine, in particular, offered this national overview. (He, by the way, visited with principals of Sacramento’s Township 9 infill project and toured downtown’s successful Sutter Brownstones infill project).
 
8:06 a.m. Thompson: This is like the third or fourth time I’ve been here. My forecast is going to be decidedly optimistic here today. People are talking about W-shaped recovery..We’ve fallen so far there’s nowhere to go but up. We’ve already started up. I just feel like things are going to get better.
 Sacramento has received a lot of national press. Your land market is coming back, with lots of bids on land and that’s one of the tell-tale signs of beginning recovery. I have a way more positive presentation this year..The last three years I have been negative about the housing market.  Nationally, our fortunes are all tied to the national financial markets. We’re going to see an uneven market..Some are beginning to recover. Others are still getting worse. Chicago, of all places, still seems to be getting worse.

The recovery is going to be slow. Housing starts usually bounce back in the first two quarters after recession, don’t think it will be so much this time. We are kind of dragging along the bottom, and it looks like we’re having a little bit of a W-shaped recovery, where it bounces down and up and down.

Headwinds: We still have all that unsold inventory. We’ve got 2.2 million extra (new and built) homes that we need to burn through. And the existing home inventory remains too high. A lot of people believe this is the single biggest problem in the market. There are too many existing homes for sale. Nationally, we have a nine months supply, compared to a usual average of 6.4 months.

We expect to get double-digit unemployment by end of year nationally. But the housing market always comes back while job losses are increasing….You still have 80 percent of households in decent shape. It’s not going to take a lot of people to move that metric forward.. It’s the reason the market rebounds before the economy in general does.

The foreclosure problems: The problem is the foreclosure problem is spreading from subprime to prime. There is the danger of anther flood of foreclosures from Alt-A and Option ARM loans. But there are so many government programs now to help people with these loans. It’s hard to tell what will happen. I’m going to punt on that one.

Consumer confidence has improved.Mortgage rates are still incredibly low. We expect mortgage rates to stay in the low “fives” for the next two years as the Fed continues its policies…The other good news is the banks have loosened up somewhat. Over 70 percent in 2008 had seriously tightened credit; now they’re starting to loosen somewhat and builders have found other sources of liquidity, too, somewhat.
 
Some market are going to recover before others..Texas, the Carolinas haven’t had rampant price inflation so they haven’t had corresponding deflation.Texas and Washington, D.C., have had strong job growth. The healthiest top 10 new home markets nationally are Austin, San Antonio, Washington, D.C., Houston, Oklahoma City, Baton Rouge, Tulsa, Salt Lake City, Dallas Fort Worth and Olympia, WA..

There are four Texas markets in top 10. Baltimore, too, is a place where sales are actually up year over year. It’s an affordable market. New home sales are up 8.4 percent from January through July this year compared to last year.

Compare that to the Central Valley of California. Sales are down 48 percent from the same time last year. But at least that rate of decline is slowing now.

New home sales in Sacramento’s six-county region are down 43.7 percent this year so far from the same time last year. Riverside-San Bernardino is down just 28 percent from last year. That’s amazing.
 
There;s nobody who doesn’t see the market coming back next year. Even Economist Mark Zandi of Moodys, who is usually a bear, thinks the market will come back in second half of 2010 and be strong in 2011. On the single-family home side, the National Association of Home Builders predicts 2010 will be better than 2008 again.

And for all the trauma there are still successful projects out there that sell eight to 10 homes a month.Most are aimed at at first-time buyers.They target tax credits. The old rules of real estate still apply: a great project in a place where people really want to live. That still works.
Transit-oriented development through this downturn has always done better than the rest.

All these projects were green. Well, it’s not so much green, but energy efficiency. There’s a lot of  marketing going around green. You may think people don’t really care about it, but what’s the harm, it seems to be working for people.

Here’s some big winners nationally:

• Mueller row and yard Homes, It’s by Catellus in east Austin. Prices start at 269K. It’s a five-minute drive from downtown.
• TLofts in West LA. CityView is the developer. These are lofts near Santa Monica Boulevard, starting at $415K. They sold 13 in first month in July. These are condos and lofts. There are 18 parking spots where you can charge an electric car and that’s gotten a lot of media attention.
• Paradise at Ironwood Crossing, outside of Phoenix. It’s in Pinal County and the San Tan Valley. The builder is Fulton Homes. It’s selling 21.5 per month. It starts at $115,900 to $148,900. Single family homes.
• Ivy at Woodbury East. This is in Irvine; The developer is The Irvine Co. and the builder is  William Lyon Homes..sold 21 homes a month in July to mid August. Starting in the mid 300s. Townhomes. A lot of these places have done price cuts to boost sales.
• Stafford Lakes: Fredericksburg, VA. Builder Centex is selling nine per month, with prices from $255K to $325. They’re single-family homes. That’s neat success story.

 8:33 a.m. Thompson: We’ve done a survey of 660 people shopping for new homes in May and June in California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Florida and North Carolina.
  Shoppers were pessimistic about the shape of the economy, but they were way more optimistic about the shape of their own personal finances. Only 31 percent saw their personal income situation as not so good or poor. A lot were in the market because they could get a lot for their money.

74 percent said they were not concerned about hitting the bottom of the market, but they  were still very concerned about losing their job or their spouse losing a job. Sixty-six percent were up to somewhat concerned about job losses. So they don’t want to stretch their finances too much to buy a home. That’s a standard feature of downturns. When it starts rebounding people are really careful about their money. The starter market always comes back first because people feel that’s where they can really get their value.

8:41 a.m: The capital regional market with Hanley Wood’s Sacramento regional sales manager and analyst Kathryn Boyce:
 
Foreclosures: We’re finally down to 11th nationally. We are at least out of the top 10 now. But notices of default are climbing again. Job growth continues to be negative. We’re expecting 41,000 lost jobs in the region in 2009. We rank 58th of 75 job markets nationally for jobs. Our unemployment is projected to go to 12.9 percent by year’s end.

We’re in the middle nationally for population growth. But 27 percent of people coming to the Sacramento area are from the Bay Area. Proximity to the Bay Area is a really good thing for Sacramento. They’re still relatively holding on for equity of their houses. It hasn’t dropped as much as Sacramento so they’re still able to bring some of the equity into Sacramento.

Our housing permit history is way off from 2008 even. We’re down 50 percent. Overall, based on year to date we’re projecting 3,400 sales for 2009. Sacramento can support about 8,500 sales a year. We stole from the future quite a bit from the hey day when we had our special financing. If they had a pulse we gave them a loan. But now Generation Y is coming in. It’s bigger than the Boom generation.
 
 They want to buy a house, but they’re not looking for big 4 BR and 4BA homes. And they’re holding back on marriage and having children.

Most sales here are in the $200-$300K range followed by $300-$400K. There’s an under-abundance of new houses in the $200K and below range. We need to have some houses brought in there. Our median sales price for existing single-family detached homes is $218K. It’s $330 for new single-family houses. We have to stay with that median income. There are no more rebates for California and no special financing. We need rebates or to lower prices.

 Our sales rate: we’re at a dismal 1.5 houses per month. But we’re seeing it increase.
 
We have 1.9 months overall of standing inventory. There’s just not that much standing inventory out there anymore. That’s a great thing…You have 10 months inventory out there total. We’re seeing builders picking up land, we’re seeing Tim Lewis, Meritage, Homes by Towne and K. Hovnanian picking up lots. We’re hearing now again about paper lots having some value.

Cancellations: We’ve had a downward trend. There isn’t a renters mentality any more. Buyers cant come in without a percentage down. The people walking into these subdivisions are committed buyers. They are actually looking for a house.

Our top 10 builders represent half the sales market and only one is a privately-owned builder, JMC.

8:52 a.m.: The existing home market: Boyce: We now have 34.4 percent affordability for new homes and 78 percent affordability for existing homes. It’s a big range there. We’re going to be soft until we lower prices.

The notices of default are coming back and we’re seeing here what might be another huge wave, depending on who you talk to, that there might be another wave of foreclosures coming.

The gap between the median is huge. It’s $189k for single family median for existing.

There are 94,000 lots out there and 18% are finished lots. The bulk of the lots are in Placer, Sacramento and Yuba Counties.
.
Land values: We are having issues with land values. If you add in impact fees from our municipalities it them just right out of whack.. I know the North State Building Industry Association is working with municipalities to lower fees.

Our outlook and conclusion:  We have a potential light in the economy. Demand is still weak, but it is turning. We’ve seen unemployment drop in July, but it’s still up, and its still up higher than other places around the country. The stock market is rebounding. The Fed will continue to buy mortgage-backed securities. But there is still a large overhang of foreclosures and we expect  Sacramento’s mortgage delinquency rate to  be 12.2 percent by the year’s end. California’s could be 14.2 percent by the end of the year.

Finally, it’s  a wild card if the municipalities will lower fees or not. We’ve seen a couple of them doing it, but we’ve seen a couple of them say no. In terms of consumer demand, the first-time home buyer stimulus was a plus. The impact was good for first half of 2009. We’re hearing talk of the National Association of Home Builders going to Congress asking for a $15,000 tax credit for all buyers. That would replace what we have in California because I don’t believe (the state of) California is going to be able to pick up that demand again.

A plan to extend the state tax credit to another 4,285 buyers of new, unoccupied homes in California – possibly as many as 500 in the capital area – is expected to receive a vote in the Legislature by Friday’s end of the session.

The buyer tax credit began March 1 and unexpectedly sold out by July 2 as many first-time California buyers combined the state credit with an $8,000 federal tax credit.

Statewide, Roseville ranked eighth among cities where new house buyers received the state credit. Sacramento ranked ninth, the state Franchise Tax Board reported.

“It was used very extensively,” said Dennis Rogers, a government affairs executive with the Roseville-based North State Building Industry Association. He and others in Sacramento’s struggling building industry said the credit helped prod buyers off the fence before it ended in July.

“We’ve definitely seen a lot of interest from homebuyers coming into the sales environment because of the program,” said Pulte Homes spokeswoman Jacque Petroulakis. Pulte is the capital region’s largest home builder.

The original tax credit also helped area builders clear an excess inventory of homes finished or nearly finished, but not yet sold.

Builders and buyers now in the sales process hope to see the bill pass the Legislature this week and be signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That’s considered likely by many close to the legislation. The governor was a force behind the original tax credit, calling it a job generator for the construction industry and larger California economy.

Statewide, 10,659 California buyers got the homebuyer credits, which allowed tax breaks of up to $3,333 per year for three years, the Franchise Tax Board reported Aug. 31. Buyers are expected to be notified by Friday about the amount of credit allocated or denied.

The tax agency stopped taking applications July 2, assuming that it had reached the program’s $100 million limit. Original expectations were that most people could claim the entire $10,000. Then a newer FTB sample of taxpayers approved for the credit based on “their 2007 income tax liabilities, and incorporating 2009 tax law changes” showed most people won’t owe enough state taxes to claim an entire $10,000 credit over three years.

“It’s estimated that most people will get about $7,000,” said FTB spokeswoman Brenda Voet. She said those who qualify for the entire $10,000 will still receive it.

The new FTB liability estimates means an estimated $30 million in credits could go unclaimed under provisions of the original tax credit bill passed in February.

Assembly Bill 765, by Assemblywoman Anna Caballero, D-Salinas, reauthorizes the tax credit under the new estimates. New credits would be available upon the bill’s signing and run through March 1, 2010. Builders must apply on behalf of buyers within one week of closing escrow.

The new bill, however, won’t help capital-area buyers who closed escrow after the FTB’s July 2 deadline. They’ll be ineligible for the tax break because they closed escrow during a time when the law, if it passes, was not in effect.

The sales tally included 3,495 existing homes and 320 new homes in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties, according to the La Jolla-based researcher. Six of every 10 closed escrows were in Sacramento County, said DataQuick.

July sales beat June’s 3,758 total. But it was well below 4,126 closings in July 2008.

It’s the second straight month that sales have fallen below last year, when a massive supply of discounted bank repos fueled a sharp uptick in sales to first-time buyers and investors. The share of repo sales, which exceeded 70 percent early this year, fell below half in Sacramento County in July, according to the Sacramento Association of Realtors.

A dwindling share of repos drove up the county’s median price again in July to $180,000, DataQuick reported. That’s after two months holding steady at $175,000.

More significantly, the rate of year-over-year price declines greatly slowed again in July in Sacramento County, with prices 14.3 percent below the same time last year. For much of the past two years Sacramento County’s median prices – where half the homes sell for more and half for less – have slipped 30 percent or more from the same time a year earlier.

Regional highlights from DataQuick for new and existing homes combined:

• Sacramento County reported 2,318 sales, up from 2,284 in June. The $180,000 median price compared to $210,000 in June 2008.

• Placer County reported 617 sales, up from 598 in June. The county’s median sales price of $295,500 was down 14.3 percent from $345,000 last year.

•El Dorado County’s 237 sales were up from 218 in June. Its median price, $330,000 was down 15.4 percent from $390,000 in July 2008.

• Yolo County’s 240 sales were up from 225 in June. The county’s $281,500 median price was down 3.9 percent from $293,000 the same time last year.

• Sutter County reported 110 sales, down from 123 in June. The county’s $160,000 median price was down 21.2 percent from last year’s $203,000.

• Yuba County’s 113 sales were also down from 136 in June. The $155,000 median price was down 15.5 percent from $183,500 in July 2008.

• Nevada County reported 151 closed escrows, up from 143 in June. The county’s median sales price, $320,000, was down 14.1 percent from $372,500 the same time last year.

• Amador County’s 29 sales were down from 31 in June. Its $197,250 median price was down 32.6 percent from $292,750 in July 2008.

Regionally, the number of for-sale signs also fell for a 23rd straight month in El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento and Yolo counties after peaking at 16,262 in Aug. 2007. Sacramento-based researcher TrendGraphix reported 6,572 homes on the market in the four counties as July ended, the fewest in four years.

TrendGraphix said 14 percent of the for-sale signs were tied to bank repos and 27 percent to buyers seeking short sales, where banks accept less than owed to avoid the higher costs of foreclosing.

The real estate service Trulia also reported this week that 27 percent of Sacramento-area listings have cut prices, with the average drop being 11 percent.

Months later they take full control of the property by foreclosing on it as the noteholder, often yielding a much lower total acquisition price than they’d have gotten in a competitive public foreclosure proceeding.

Earlier this month, real estate investment firm PCCP LLC, formerly known as Pacific Coast Capital Partners, took over a 25-acre new housing community called Folsom Treehouse, in Folsom, California.

The development has 291 finished lots, 99 single family lots, 164 condo lots and 28 constructed or partially built houses.

Folsom Treehouse’s original developer defaulted on a $22.5 million loan in late 2008. Last March, PCCP bought a discounted note on the project from United Commercial Bank and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

The size of the discount to PCCP was not made public, but in purchases of severely distressed notes, the price can go to 50 cents on the dollar — even less, depending upon the circumstances.

If the discount was 50 percent in this case, for example, the investor might have gotten effective control of property that had originally been valuated at well over $22 million for less than half that price.

PCCP did not return phone calls from Realty Times seeking clarification on what it paid, but in a statement Jim Galovan, a vice president for the firm, said the deal typified the company’s opportunistic approach.

Three thousand miles to the east in New York City, where growing numbers of residential and commercial building owners are defaulting on loans and seeing property values plummet, savvy investors are pursuing a similar strategy.

Developer and investor Ed Mermelstein says multifamily properties, especially newly or partially built new condos, are in serious distress.

Lenders are faced with a terrible choice: Either hang on to a nonperforming note on a building declining in value, OR listen to investors like Mermelstein who’ll offer to take the note off their hands for a deeply- discounted price, all cash, in thirty days.

Banks slowly but surely are becoming more receptive, Mermelstein told Realty Times last week.

But how do you find deals with potentially big discounts and know the right moment to approach banks stuck with nonperforming paper?

“You’ve got to know people who’s business it is to know,” he said, especially brokers, lawyers and lenders who are hardwired into the local market, and know who’s in pain.

 As the first local builder to go under as the housing bust gathered steam here in Sacramento, it was probably inevitable that Dunmore would be among the first rumored to be engaged in some kind of comeback.

Not so, Dunmore, 54, said in a phone conversation. Not yet. He has no new limited liability corporation to sniff around for land to start over.

“I’m always looking. I’m always looking at opportunities,” said Dunmore. “I can’t really say I’ve found anything at this time. But I’m still in the hunt if some opportunity pops up. But there’s nothing on the horizon.”

Dunmore Homes filed for bankruptcy in Nov. 2007 and was liquidated in Feb. 2008 – after more than a half century in business and construction of 22,000 homes. Dunmore described the current building industry economy in the capital region as “pretty flat.” But at least it’s finally stopped getting worse, he said.

In California, it says, 42 percent of mortgages are in that condition often referred to as “under water.” The report says 2.9 million California mortgages are in a state of negative equity and  3.1 million more are nearing it as the housing crisis persists and the economy worsens.

Nationally, 15.2 million mortgages tied to $3.4 trillion worth of residential property are in a negative equity position, and consequently in some danger of foreclosure, says First American.

The firm didn’t immediately have a Sacramento-area breakdown, but in the past has said that more than one-third of the region’s mortgages were in that condition. We have an email into the firm to try and get the regional picture.

“Negative equity continues to be the dominant driver of the mortgage market because it leads to foreclosures in the event a borrower experiences some kind of economic shock such as a job loss, illness or other adverse situation. Given that negative equity did not increase this quarter and home prices declines are moderating or flattening, we may be at the peak of the negative equity cycle. However, until negative equity recedes and unemployment declines, mortgage risk will continue to be very elevated,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for First American CoreLogic.

What you’ll see here is that foreclosures and defaults are reaching into more affluent areas such as Roseville, Auburn and Granite Bay that were once immune to a problem largely confined to risky subprime lending. It’s not that the numbers have skyrocketed – it’s that they are up pretty significantly from the same time last year. The theory is that rising unemployment and loss of incomes is banging on the door of wealthier neighborhoods now.

On the contrary, some of the hardest-hit ZIP Codes since the market began imploding in early 2007 are showing signs of declining or leveling off of defaults and foreclosures.

There’s lots to learn about your neighborhood in the MDA DataQuick stats that follow here.

Here are defaults and foreclosures by ZIP Code. It’s an EXCEL chart. You can click between the tabs for defaults and foreclosures, which are called here trustees deeds.

It’s the newest count in a growing tally of foreclosures that claimed 4,448 more area homes in April, May and June, researcher MDA DataQuick reported Wednesday.

Statewide, lenders have taken back 410,744 homes since the start of 2007, including 45,667 in the second quarter, when they also sent default notices to 124,562 more homes. DataQuick said 10,682 of those defaults were in Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties.

Lenders issue the formal foreclosure warnings when homeowners fall three months or more behind on payments.

Analysts on Wednesday called the numbers a sign that the foreclosure crisis remains grim as the economy stumbles and unemployment has risen to 11.6 percent in the capital region and statewide. Widespread state government furloughs amounting to 14 percent wage cuts in thousands of area households – and the resulting economic contraction for other businesses – are also tightening the vise.

At area loan counseling centers like ClearPoint Financial Solutions, unemployment and lost income are now the new face of the loan crisis, said spokesman Bruce McClary.

“It doesn’t matter what kind of mortgage they have. It’s the change in income and financial circumstances,” he said.

The firm recently merged with By Design Financial Solutions, a nonprofit counselor with offices in North Highlands.

DataQuick’s quarterly report shows that many borrowers getting into trouble with mortgages aren’t escaping.

“It’s proof that there hasn’t been this huge shift toward workouts, whether that’s been a short sale or a loan modification,” analyst Andrew LePage said.

Santa Ana-based First American CoreLogic reported recently that 9 percent of home loans in Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado and Yolo counties were delinquent in May. DataQuick said that June counts of foreclosures and notices of default were up sharply from those in April and May, suggesting worse numbers in the third quarter.

In Roseville, Penny Krainz fears she will be one of those statistics. This week she got a 90-day notice that she would be losing her job at an area high-tech company.

“That ought to be right around the time they foreclose on my house,” she said Wednesday.

Krainz stopped making payments months ago, she said, on a house she bought in 2002 for $210,000.

A bigger house next door – a bank repo once valued at $379,000 – recently sold for $114,000, she said. That drove her into a category of borrowers who simply give up because they have high payments and owe so much more than the house is worth.

“This is so out of the realm of my upbringing,” Krainz said. “I would never in a million years not paid my mortgage.”

DataQuick reported that half the loans that defaulted in the second quarter were made before July 2006 and half were made afterward. Lenders that originated the majority of the troubled loans were Washington Mutual, a failed thrift taken over late last year by JPMorgan Chase; Wells Fargo; and Countrywide, the failed lender taken over by Bank of America in mid-2008.

Second-quarter foreclosures and defaults in area counties:

• Amador County: 29 foreclosures and 85 defaults.

• El Dorado County: 202 foreclosures and 632 defaults.

• Nevada County: 98 foreclosures and 286 defaults.

• Placer County: 515 foreclosures and 1,570 defaults.

• Sacramento County: 3,019 foreclosures and 6,862 defaults.

• Sutter County: 154 foreclosures and 355 notices of default.

• Yolo County: 216 foreclosures, 541 defaults.

• Yuba County: 215 foreclosures and 351 defaults.