Congratulations, you have reached The South Lake Tahoe Real Estate website where “You Can Search Like a Realtor”and find the home, condo, cabin, or vacant land that you are looking for. If you just have a question, or need advice or consulting, our knowledgeable realtors are available seven days a week to help you. Feel free to contact Paradise Real Estate in South Lake Tahoe. We can answer common questions regarding bank owned properties vs. foreclosures, or how to buy a foreclosure, and explain what and how a short sale works and if a short sale is right for you. Our team Paradise will help you with easy to follow steps on buying a foreclosed home. We also have a blog about the Lake Tahoe real estate market that is updated weekly and includes statistics for new listings and recent sales.

Please explore our web site and use our search tool to find Lake Tahoe foreclosures (bank owned) and short sale homes. You can search all active MLS listings for real estate in Lake Tahoe, California and Nevada. You can also sign up for our Get California Listings Via Email, and our Get Nevada Listings Via Email, so when a new listing is posted on the MLS in your favorite neighborhood, at the price range you selected, you’re immediately notified. This is a very powerful tool that will help you stay on top and ahead of the current market.

Missing one or more mortgage payments means you are in default.

If you miss one or two payments, a mortgage company will usually contact you to demand payment and may offer to modify the loan. This is a good time to consult a counselor or lawyer and ask them to negotiate with the mortgage company.

Receiving a Notice of Default.

If you do nothing in response to the mortgage company’s attempts to contact you, or you cannot come to an agreement with them, the mortgage company generally sends a further notice advising that they are declaring a “default” of the loan obligations. The official notice is called the Notice of Default and is filed with the County Recorder’s Office by the trustee (usually a title company). A copy must be mailed to you. The Notice of Default must spell out the specific breach of contract. If you want to know whether a Notice of Default has been filed against your property, consult with the County Recorder in the County where the property is located. All interested parties must be served and notified of the foreclosure.

The filing of the Notice of Default begins the Reinstatement Waiting Period, which is 90 days. This is the time period that you get to cure the debt by paying off all overdue payments. (i.e. bringing the mortgage current).

Selling the property – Notice of Trustee’s Sale.

After the 90 day Reinstatement Waiting Period is up , the Trustee has the obligation to do a final check to see if the deficiency has been cleared. After this check, a Notice of Sale of the property can be issued and you must be served with this notice. The Notice of Sale must be published once per week for a period of at least 20 days. The Trustee is also obligated to post in a conspicuous place on the property and in at least one off-property place, a sign notifying the public of the upcoming sale. After the 20 day Publication Period is up, the auction for sale of the home can be held.

As stated earlier, the Trustee does not have to go to court to have the right to sell the property. The sale is an auction and the property is sold to the highest bidder. If anyone other than the beneficiary (mortgage company) purchases the property, they must have cash in hand.

The laws that govern California foreclosures are found in California Civil Code, Section 2924. To view these statutes on the web, you can visit: http://www.leginfo.ca.gov

If the property is foreclosed through the court system in a judicial foreclosure, there is a right of redemption period after foreclosure. However, foreclosures that are non-judicial have no period of redemption in California. Most foreclosures in California are non-judicial, so more often than not, once the sale of the defaulted property is complete, the sale is final.

California Foreclosure Timeline

After the Property is sold at the Foreclosure Sale.

Whoever owns your home, cannot just change the locks to the home. The new owner must serve you with a 3-day written notice to quit, and then must take you through the formal eviction process in order to get possession of the property. That process takes about 30-45 days.

If someone knocks on your door and tells you to get out, do not panic. No one has the right to simply tell you to leave without going through the formal eviction process. If you feel threatened or unsafe, do not answer your door, or call the police. The new owner must follow the formal legal process and evict you in order to have you leave.

Information compiled by University of San Francisco, School of Law.

This weekly report is created by Dan Spano, broker of Paradise Real Estate located in the Stateline area of South Lake Tahoe,  CA. This information is focusing strictly on the South Lake Tahoe, CA. side of Lake Tahoe.

As of today, July 30,  2010 @ 2:00 pm:

Current active single family residential and condo listings for all of South Lake Tahoe, CA; 523.  75 of these active listings are bank-owned or short sales.

Homes sold from July 1,  2010 to July 30,  2010 are: 33. Of the 33 homes sold, 15 or 46% , are foreclosure (bank owned or short sales). During the  exact same time period last year 38 homes sold, of which 10 or 27% were foreclosure. Total homes sold year to date are 298, of which 152 or 51% are foreclosures.  Total homes sold for the same time period last year were 217, of which 86 or 40% were foreclosures.

There are a lot of great opportunities for buyers for both bank owned/short sales, as well as sellers that are competitive with the bank owned and short sale properties.

If you would like to search for current homes for sale please use this easy search tool for South Lake Tahoe, CA and NV real estate. There is also an option to get instant email notifications of brand new listings as they get posted by real estate agents in the South Lake Tahoe area.

Foreclosures can vary from state to state. The following information will help you to understand the California foreclosure process.

California is known as the Title Theory state where the mortgage company (i.e. bank) holds the title to the property while you live on the land and continue to make mortgage payments. The document that secures the title is usually called a “deed of trust” but may also be referred to as a mortgage. California has a complicated set of rules concerning foreclosures. The entire foreclosure process is described below.

How are mortgages in California foreclosed?

In general, foreclosure means that when you miss a payment or two , the bank sends an official notice that you are in the foreclosure process. Then you have a period of time to cure the deficiency. If you cannot do that, the mortgage company pursues foreclosure through either judicial or non-judicial means. An auction is then held and the property is sold to the highest bidder.

The primary method of foreclosure in California involves what is known as non-judicial foreclosure. This type of foreclosure does not involve court action. When the deed of the trust/mortgage is initially signed, it will usually contain a provision called a power of sale clause. This allows the trustee (usually a title company) to sell the property to satisfy the defaulted loan. The trustee acts as a representative of the mortgage company to sell the property, which typically occurs in the form of an auction.

California has a requirement known as the one action rule. If a foreclosure is completed by non-judicial means (outside of court), then the mortgage company cannot pursue a second action against you if the auction proceeds do not meet the amount due on the property.

If a foreclosure is judicial, the house may be sold and a separate judgment may be obtained against you for the remaining balance due on the loan (up to the full amount of the loan plus foreclosure costs) if the auction proceeds do not meet the balance due on the property.

Most loans are foreclosed upon using non-judicial foreclosure, but a mortgage company has the option of using judicial foreclosure. Since this process takes longer than non-judicial foreclosure, it is rarely used. In California non-judicial remedies have stringent notice requirements and the mortgage document are required to contain the power of sale language in order to use this type of foreclosure method.

Information compiled by The University of San Francisco School of Law

Finding a new home. Bad credit. Surprise tax bills. If you’re facing foreclosure, brace yourself for some difficult situations. Here’s some smart advice to help you deal with each one.

These days, record-breaking foreclosure statistics are coming out with numbing frequency. But what happens to the thousands of families after their personal financial disaster is added to the mounting national count?

Unfortunately, once a foreclosure is final, the financial and emotional upheaval is far from over.

While there’s considerable pain, most foreclosure victims will eventually become homeowners again, says Jay Zagorsky, a research scientist at Ohio State University.

Still, that won’t happen any time soon, especially since mortgage rule maker Fannie Mae has recently lengthened the time that must lapse between a foreclosure and approval for a new mortgage.

Here’s a look at the issues foreclosed families grapple with and some smart solutions.

1. Finding a new home
The immediate problem is obvious: where and how to find a new place to live.

Lack of cash for a rental deposit is probably the biggest barrier to foreclosed owners getting re-established on their own. Landlords will sometimes accept tenants who have a credit score of just 580, says Maurice Ortiz, marketing director at The Apartment People in Chicago.

But if landlords look beyond a numerical score to credit records, a foreclosure may spook them, since it indicates the potential tenant hasn’t paid his housing bills, Ortiz adds. If the foreclosure can be explained, however, and if the rental candidate has a solid job history, he may be accepted.

Moreover, “if you’re on the edge, you may have to double your deposit,” says Mark Fogelman, president of Memphis-based Fogelman Management Group.

Scraping together a rental deposit isn’t easy for cash-strapped foreclosed owners.

“That’s why I recommend that people try to make plans as soon as they think foreclosure (is inevitable),” says Patricia Lynch, a corporate trainer with ClearPoint Financial Solutions in Richmond, Va. Anyone who has an FHA-insured loan who’s being foreclosed on should investigate the “cash for keys” program, whereby they get a check for up to $1,000 if they voluntarily vacate their home and leave it “broom clean,” Lynch says.

2. Suffering through the credit fallout
Once owners default on their mortgages, other creditors consider it much more likely they won’t collect what they’re owed either.

“Credit cards have a ‘default’ rate, and (foreclosed owners) could see their interest rate jump to very high levels — as much as 30 percent,” says John Ulzheimer, president of consumer education for Credit.com. “You’ll also have a hard time getting a decent car loan,” he adds.

If a foreclosure is an isolated event on an otherwise good credit record, consumers may be able to rehabilitate their records and garner better loans and card rates in 24 months, Ulzheimer says.

But since a foreclosure is rarely the former owner’s only credit slip-up and foreclosures are often combined with the fallout of punishing rates, some former homeowners will never climb back up to a good credit score, Ulzheimer says.

3. Buying another home of one’s own
Fannie Mae has just increased the length of time it takes from the completion of a foreclosure sale until the borrower can get a new mortgage from four years to five years.

The extra year is designed to deter what Fannie Mae believes are borrowers who have made reckless debt decisions. But foreclosed owners who can explain that extenuating circumstances — typically situations beyond someone’s control, such as a job loss — are the impetus for the foreclosure must wait only three years.

Perhaps the best option for obtaining a mortgage after foreclosure is with a federally insured FHA loan, says Jerry DuPaw Jr., a mortgage loan officer in McHenry, Ill.

The minimum time between the completion of foreclosure until when you can be approved for an FHA loan is three years — whether or not there are extenuating circumstances. Still, FHA borrowers will have to show that they’ve been practicing good bill-paying habits since the foreclosure.

4. Owing a potential employer an explanation
Should you lose your job as well as your home, your new job hunt shouldn’t be hindered by the subject of your foreclosure coming up in job interviews — unless you’re applying for a job in which you handle money.

“We recommend that employers do credit checks when they are concerned about how financially responsible someone is — which may be for any money-related position from a cashier to an accountant,” says Robin Throckmorton, a human-resources consultant in Loveland, Ohio.

The federal Fair Credit Reporting Act has rules employers must follow, such as notifying the applicant of the credit check, and most companies limit checks so as not to run afoul of the law.

If a foreclosed owner is applying for a financial job, he should have an explanation ready, perhaps describing how the foreclosure has changed some of his personal money-management skills today, Throckmorton says.

5. Getting hit with a tax bill
It seems like the ultimate injustice: You lose your home and then weeks or months later you open the mail and find a bill for taxes on the amount of mortgage that the lender was never able to recover from the sale of the property.

Any time debt is forgiven, it’s a potentially taxable event. You are not paying back money that you borrowed, so that money is considered income by the IRS.

However, there are some exceptions. Last year, Congress passed relief for foreclosed owners — but only those who lost their principal residence and didn’t have a mortgage that they had previously taken as a cash-out refinance to use the proceeds for expenses other than improving their home, says Julian Block, a tax attorney and syndicated tax columnist in New York City.

But foreclosure victims may still not have to pay a tax tab, even if they had a cash-out refinance. That’s because the IRS has long allowed taxpayers to escape a bill on forgiven debt if they are insolvent. If, for instance, you receive a Form 1099c from a lender saying it couldn’t recover $5,000 of what it was owed, but your debts exceed your assets to the tune of $15,000, you must file Form 982 with your tax return to clear your tax obligation.

6. Living through loss
The emotional toll of leaving a home and neighborhood are impossible to quantify. One recent report released by First Focus, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group, finds that about 2 million children are likely to be affected by foreclosure in some way, including the disruption of being placed in a new school after a move.

One glimmer of hope is that the large numbers of foreclosures today may lessen the stigma of the event, Throckmorton says. She remembers when job applicants had to explain frequent changes in employment, because jumping from job to job was frowned upon. “Now that’s considered normal. With foreclosures so much in the news, it may prompt people not to make judgments.”

By Marilyn Kennedy Melia, Bankrate.com

Foreclosure crisis: 1 million in U.S. expected to lose homes this year
— More than 1 million American households are likely to lose their homes to foreclosure this year, as lenders work their way through a huge backlog of borrowers who have fallen behind on their loans.

Nearly 528,000 homes were taken over by lenders in the first six months of the year, a rate that is on track to eclipse the more than 900,000 homes repossessed in 2009, according to data released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listing service.

“That would be unprecedented,” said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac.

By comparison, lenders have historically taken over about 100,000 homes a year, Sharga said.

The surge in home repossessions reflects the dynamic of a foreclosure crisis that has shown signs of leveling off in recent months, but remains a crippling drag on the housing market.

The pace at which new homes falling behind in payments and entering the foreclosure process has slowed as banks continue to let delinquent borrowers stay longer in their homes rather than adding to the glut of foreclosed properties on the market. At the same time, lenders have stepped up repossessions in an effort to clear out the backlog of distressed inventory on their books.

The number of households facing foreclosure in the first half of the year climbed 8 percent versus the same period last year, but dropped 5 percent from the last six months of 2009, according to RealtyTrac, which tracks notices for defaults, scheduled home auctions and home repossessions.

In all, about 1.7 million homeowners received a foreclosure-related warning between January and June. That translates to one in 78 U.S. homes.

Foreclosure notices posted monthly declines in April, May and June, but Sharga said one shouldn’t read too much into that.

“The banks are really sort of controlling or managing the dial on how fast these things get processed so they can ultimately manage the inventory of distressed assets on the market,” he said.

On average, it takes about 15 months for a home loan to go from being 30 days late to the property being foreclosed and sold, according to Lender Processing Services, which tracks mortgages.

Assuming the U.S. economy doesn’t worsen, aggravating the foreclosure crisis, Sharga projects it will take lenders through 2013 to resolve the backlog of distressed properties that have on their books right now.

And a new wave of foreclosures could be coming in the second half of the year, especially if the unemployment rate remains high, mortgage-assistance programs fail, and the economy doesn’t improve fast enough to lift home sales.

The prospect of lenders taking over more than a million homes this year is likely to push housing values down, experts say.

Foreclosed homes are typically sold at steep discounts, lowering the value of surrounding properties.

“The downward pressure from foreclosures will persist and prices will be very weak well into 2012,” said Celia Chen, senior director of Moody.

She projects home prices will fall as much as 6 percent over the next 12 months from where they were in the first-quarter.

Economic woes, such as unemployment or reduced income, continue to be the main catalysts for foreclosures this year. Initially, lax lending standards were the culprit. Now, homeowners with good credit who took out conventional, fixed-rate loans are the fastest growing group of foreclosures.

There are more than 7.3 million home loans in some stage of delinquency, according to Lender Processing Services.

Lenders are offering to help some homeowners modify their loans. But many borrowers can’t qualify or they are falling back into default. The Obama administration’s $75 billion foreclosure prevention effort has made only a small dent in the problem.

More than a third of the 1.2 million borrowers who have enrolled in the mortgage modification program have dropped out. That compares with about 27 percent who have received permanent loan modifications and are making payments on time.

Among states, Nevada posted the highest foreclosure rate in the first half of the year. One in every 17 households there received a foreclosure notice. However, foreclosures there are down 6 percent from a year earlier.

Arizona, Florida, California and Utah were next among states with the highest foreclosure rates. Rounding out the top 10 were Georgia, Michigan, Idaho, Illinois and Colorado.

This article is provided by: By Alex Veiga

Associated Press