A new report suggests that Windsor and Rohnert Park had the largest rates of “distressed” properties for sale last month in Sonoma County.
Forty-five percent of the available houses and condominiums in each of the two communities had gone through foreclosures or were available as short sales, according to data released Wednesday by Movoto.com of Redwood City.
In short sales, an owner seeks lender approval to sell the property for less than the amount owed on the loan.
Santa Rosa, the county’s largest city, reported more distressed properties than nearly all the other communities combined. But its portion of distressed inventory was lower at 35 percent.
Twenty-seven percent of Petaluma’s available inventory was deemed distressed.
Among the county’s smaller towns, the rate of distressed inventory for Healdsburg was 11 percent; Sebastopol, 22 percent; Cloverdale, 24 percent; and Cotati, nearly 38 percent. For the town of Sonoma and surroundings, the rate was nearly 14 percent.
The data reported was for March 31.
“My guess is a lot of the distressed properties are short sales,” said Mark Brandemuehl, Movoto’s vice president of marketing.
For the future, he foresees “more of the same” in regard to the number of distressed properties moving to market.
“You’ve got a lot of houses in the foreclosure process,” Brandemuehl said.
— Robert Digitale