Foreclosures Counted as Sales by DataQuick

Today's Bubble News is brought to you by a reader in Shasta County.

You are not going to believe this! I live in Shasta County, California. The local newspaper, the Redding Record Searchlight (http://www.redding.com/) publishes addresses and $ amount of sales monthly. Their source in Data Quick. FORECLOSURES are being posted with the sales and counted as sales
(i.e. lender foreclosure before property is sold to new owner.)

On a lark, I decided to track foreclosures for impact on 2007 sales. The Record Searchlight publishes "Notices of Trustees Sales" (potential foreclosures) in the legal section of the paper. When the lender gets the property back (foreclosure), a "Trustees Deed" is issued. I found foreclosures being counted as sales.

Data Quick does not distinguish "Deeds" (regular property transfer) from "Trustee Deeds" (foreclosure). Both are counted together as sales. For Shasta County
141 sales were reported for November --- 12 were foreclosures. So, in
reality, 129 properties were sold.

Data Quick did not respond to my email. The Record Searchlight contacted Data Quick and confirmed my finding. Data Quick indicated their program, "Prospect Finder Farm Services", has NO function to distinguish Deeds from Trustees Deeds
(foreclosures) and it would be expensive to fix this gross error.

Bottom Line: ALL CALIFORNIA SALES ARE OVERSTATED BY DATA QUICK as they add foreclosures to total sales (http://www.dqnews.com/).

Here are a couple of foreclosure examples which can be checked on http://www.zillow.com/ which is doing the same thing as Data Quick:

1025 Chardonnay Walk, Redding, CA 96001 shows sold $635,000 on 11/17/06. (Foreclosure currently on the market with Coldwell Banker for $520,000 who listed the lender owned property.)

6740 Southgate Drive, Redding, CA 96001 shows sold $249,474 on 11/13/06. (Foreclosure currently on the market with Bears Den Real Estate who listed the lender owned property for $213,000).

Check this out for your area and let the "blog world" know about this bizarre happening.

Thanks,

Suzanne from Shasta County