Foreclosures, REOs (Bank Owned Real Estate) and NODs (Notice of Defaults) were the headline news beginning in 2007 and for most of 2008. The number of foreclosures went through the roof, over extending housing supplies, creating blighted markets, and causing unheard of price reductions on existing and new housing inventory. Then in the first quarter 2009, things changed.

Presidents Obama’s administration asked for a moratorium on foreclosures while they enacted new programs to assist the struggling home owners and the foreclosure market slowed to more manageable levels. As a result, the housing inventory began to decrease, home prices stopped their steep decline, and buyers started making offers. Optimism around the housing market has slowly improved and news on foreclosures has slowly dwindled away.

Bruce Norris, a California Real Estate Analyst, in a TNG radio interview May 16th, said that the current low inventory levels are giving ‘a false indicator’. He said that the shadow inventory (foreclosed homes that the banks are sitting on) and new NODs are going to give us a second wave of high foreclosures sometime in 2009.