Lots of Foreclosures In California; Not So Many In Marin

Lenders moved to foreclose on 110,392 homes in California during the first three months of 2008, according to DataQuick. The high number of foreclosures was a record for every county in the state except Los Angeles (which was hard hit during the recession of the early 1990s and which, as a result, had even more homes in foreclosure eight years ago than today). What about the local picture? A 166-percent increase in foreclosures in Marin sounds scary, until you look closer at the real year-to-year numbers:

San Francisco	216	420	94.4%
Alameda	1,578	3,194	102.4%
Contra Costa	1,969	4,718	139.6%
Santa Clara	1,058	3,074	190.5%
San Mateo	382	911	138.5%
Marin	118	314	166.1%
Solano	914	2,091	128.8%
Sonoma	407	1,392	242.0%
Napa	88	284	222.7%
Bay Area	6,730	16,398	143.7%

Lenders moved to foreclose on 314 houses in Marin in the first quarter (up from 118 during the same period last year). More than half of the 314 are located in Novato. What the numbers show, overall, is that Marin is one of the three counties in the state (along with San Francisco and San Mateo) where mortgages are least likely to be delinquent. The most likely are Stanislaus, San Joaquin and Merced counties.