Thank you so much for the comment. I am grateful to have you here.

I mean:

Charlottesville
Albemarle
Greene
Fluvanna
Orange
Nelson
Buckingham
Louisa

Louisa and Orange are at the edges – they really belong in more than one MSA.

The valley, as you noted in your earlier posts, is only over the Rockfish Gap, but a world away by so many other measures.

I don’t search or subscribe to the Richmond-Times Dispatch, so there may be Fluvanna & Louisa foreclosures I’m not capturing in my stats. I watch the Media General papers (Amherst, NCT, News-Advance) and the Daily Progress. I see, but do not track/record, trustee sale notices in Madison, Orange, Buckingham, Louisa and Greene, so I’m excluding those when I say “30%”.

I’d predict that Culpepper and Warrenton will ultimately have very high foreclosure rates due to the explosive sprawl build-out up there. But, IMO, they belong in the DC MSA.

Meanwhile, “The Lake” has long been (as I’m sure you’re well aware) – before Greene even – the Charlottesville low-cost “starter home” “gated community”. In other words: targeted to people who are stretching to get the most square footage for their buck – stretching their budgets. I expect the concentration of toxic mortgage products was much higher there than in Albemarle or C’ville. I wonder how long before the lake ZIP code is tagged by lenders as a major “declining market” the way PWC is, for example.

I wish there was a reliable, accurate means by which to track local foreclosure data.

What do you mean by “our area?”

I’m an idiot – that should have been addressed to Daniel. Sorry fellas.

I agree with the original premise that the area has had lower numbers than many other bubble areas, but there are at least 10 active (as in, not yet auctioned) foreclosures at the Lake right now.

Because VA law doesn’t have NOD and NOF legal filing requirements like other states, aggregators like foreclosure.com appear to lag, badly.

Yes, your observation about Louisa/Zion’s Crossroads is exactly right, they are close behind. I anticipate that Crozet will be the next big hotbed.

Makes sense that Fluvanna would spike first, since many people are driven there by high prices (Augusta County on the other side), but I too would like to see some sources.

Also anecdotally, I see a ton of foreclosure listings for the Louisa/Zion X-roads/Campbell Road area.

I am surprised the People’s Republic of Charlottesville hasn’t hatched some sort of bailout plan.

Do you have a source for your “exploding” foreclosures in Fluvanna? As a REALTOR who lives and works in Fluvanna, it would be good to have numbers I can cite. I haven’t seen any reliable ones, and from the perspective of my business, I haven’t seen a tremendous amount of foreclosures.

Although “exploding” is a relative term. With the low number of overall homes, a small increase can represent a huge percentage.

Agreed. It’s still far too early to call the wreck “cleaned up,” particularly with stories like this still coming out –

Bank of America: $739 billion in mortgages at risk in next 5 years

Sure, we’re better than many (most?) but are we through the storm? Doubtful.

- this study is based on October numbers; that was only one month or so after the true MBS/CDO Credit Crunch hit. I’d suggest we appear unscathed largely because of the lag effect.

- this doesn’t seem to include Lake Monticello/Palmyra County, where foreclosures appear to be exploding. That area is followed closely by Greene, and finally Southern Albemarle.

I think it’s a little early in the game to predict that we’re OK, particularly since the bulk of the ARM resets aren’t here yet. I do agree that the C’ville area has employment fundamentals that mean we have a better shot of weathering the ‘underwater’ period, however anyone who must refinance due to resets remains vulnerable. OFHEO numbers showed that our MSA was as much as 25% over-inflated in ’05; the bubble seems to have continued to grow strongly here up until 2nd QTR ’07. As in NoVa, the further out regions fall first – and Greene and Palmyra seem to fit the trend – not unlike Loudon, Faquier and Prince William.