“We are certainly seeing a lower level of foreclosure activity than a year or two ago,” said DataQuick President John Walsh. “The question is, how much of that decline is due to market conditions, and how much is due to policy changes that try to address economic distress?”

In the Bay Area, lenders filed 10,012 notices of default, the formal first step in the foreclosure process, in the final three months of the year, DataQuick said. That was down 16.6 percent from the same time in 2010. Statewide, 61,517 notices of default were filed, down 11.9 percent from the previous year.

The trend carried through to trustee’s deeds, the final step in the foreclosure process. In the Bay Area, a total of 4,831 trustee’s deeds were recorded in the fourth quarter, a 16.2 percent decline from 2010. In California, 31,260 trustee’s deeds were filed, an 11.8 percent decline.

The numbers are still high by historic standards, but are down compared with the rise in foreclosures four years ago.

As the housing market finds its footing and the economy adds jobs, the number of homeowners forced into foreclosure tends to drop.

“Once prices stabilize or start going up a little, fewer people get pushed into the distressed arena because there is a better chance that they will be able to refinance or sell the house and clear their loan,” said Andrew Le-Page, a DataQuick analyst. “Or they decide to fight to hang on. If prices were still going down, they might decide to throw in the towel.”

Lenders, which have come under ferocious criticism for not being more responsive to struggling homeowners, also have altered the way they handle late payments. Some of those changes stemmed from the 2010 robo-signing scandal that uncovered sloppy foreclosure paperwork.

“Five years ago, almost all mortgage payment delinquencies would have triggered a default notice after a certain amount of time,” Walsh said. “Strategies now include short sales, refinances, interest rate changes, principal reduction, as well as just plain waiting longer. It will be interesting to see how this plays out as the economy improves and the housing market finds its footing.”

Much of the housing distress remains concentrated in lower-cost inland areas where overbuilding was rampant during the housing boom. San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin remain the three California counties where mortgages are least likely to go into default, DataQuick said.

Across the Bay Area, there were 5.7 notices of default for every 1,000 homes in the fourth quarter. That concentration ranges from a low of 2.9 notices of default per 1,000 homes in San Francisco to a high of 10.7 such notices per 1,000 homes in Solano County. Statewide, the average was 7 notices of default per 1,000 homes.

For trustee’s deeds, the Bay Area had 2.7 per 1,000 homes, ranging from 1.2 per 1,000 homes in San Francisco to 6 in Solano. Statewide, there were 3.7 trustee’s deeds per 1,000 homes.

“We’ve worked through the worst of it,” LePage said.

E-mail Carolyn Said at csaid@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/25/BU0U1MTTIP.DTL

California’s up-and-down economic recovery took another turn for the worse in May as employers shed a net 29,200 jobs from payrolls, a surprisingly large loss following the healthy gains seen earlier this year.

Some of the losses are probably tied to a slowdown in trade with Japan, which is still recovering from a devastating tsunami, and from rising gas prices and other costs that have led employers to put the brakes on hiring, economists said.

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“I see Japan written all over this report,” said Esmael Adibi, an economist at Chapman University.

Cargo passing through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach rose just 1% in May, the same month in which employers eliminated 3,600 positions in trade, transportation and utilities.

Construction was another weak spot, shedding 5,000 jobs, as the sour real estate market continued to be a drag on the recovery. Home sales statewide fell 13.3% last month from a year earlier, and home values dropped by 10.4%.

The unemployment rate inched down to 11.7%, according to the state Employment Development Department report released Friday. But analysts saw little to cheer, saying that the decline in the rate probably reflects growing numbers of Californians who have given up the job hunt or who have left to seek work elsewhere. Only Nevada has higher unemployment than California.

The trend mirrors a gloomier outlook nationally, with both employment and economic growth slowing amid higher prices for gasoline and other consumer goods and services.

“This is one more indication of how slow the recovery is proceeding and is likely to proceed,” said Michael Bernick, an attorney who formerly headed the state Employment Development Department. “It also raises a counter-narrative, that there are structural changes and the economy, in certain sectors, needs fewer workers.”

That’s not what Donna Smith, 23, of Salton City wants to hear. She recently completed a certificate program in business management from Everest College, a multi-campus vocational school, but hasn’t had luck finding any work.

“I’m looking for any basic entry-level position, but it’s kind of hard,” she said. “There’s not really much.”

The job losses in May came after the state added an adjusted 14,900 jobs in April, when the unemployment rate was 11.8%, according to the latest EDD figures. The state experienced five straight months of job growth from October through February.

Adibi sounded an optimistic note, saying that the Japanese rebuilding effort will eventually translate into more work in California. He also predicts the state will gain jobs as consumers start spending discretionary income on vacations and on items they’d been holding off on purchasing.

Japan, he added, “is just a hiccup — job creation is going to gain momentum as we go through the year.”

Technology is one bright spot. Tech companies in the Bay Area are on a hiring binge, helping keep the unemployment rate in the San Francisco area to 8.1%.

The San Francisco area added a net 2,600 jobs in May, while the San Jose-Santa Clara statistical area added 2,100. Employment in the information sector has grown 7.1% in just a year.

“It is shocking to me — reading the paper, watching the news, hearing the unemployment reports, hearing house prices continuing to slump — you just don’t see that in the Bay Area,” said Kevin Hartz, chief executive of Eventbrite, an online ticketing company that has hired 32 people so far this quarter. The firm has been forced to recruit engineers from out of state to fill some open positions.

The Bay Area is one of the few regions to consistently gain jobs this year, thanks to the information sector, but most of the state’s unemployed lack the education to work in the newly created jobs.

Prospects aren’t so bright elsewhere. Many of the state’s unemployed workers are trained in industries — such as construction — that have virtually disappeared. Job prospects in retail and trade, meanwhile, have been dimmed by corporate efforts to make do with fewer people, often by having computer programs and machines do jobs that used to require workers.

“Becoming sophisticated, more advanced and computerized may not pay out in additional jobs,” said Johannes Moenius, an economist at the University of Redlands who studies the logistics industry. “It could even mean negative job growth.”

Article source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-california-jobs-20110618,0,4509354.story