Or at the very least behaved like one. You know what they say, if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's likely a duck. I've covered some of these topics earlier but want to bring together some new factors that show that house prices are not sustainable and have been artificially inflated, along with some new charts to illustrate the point.

While I'm pretty good at math, I'm not a mathematician. What I can do is recognize and relate patterns. So there won't be any complex formulas as in a more advanced proof, but it should also be easier to understand.

I'm also going to try and debunk the myth that interest rates made house prices affordable, even though prices had grown so fast. Using conservative calculations a responsible buyer should use when deciding how much to spend on a house, it appears that in 2006 houses were selling for almost twice what the median household could afford.

Dan Levy of Bloomberg is reporting on RealtyTrac's November foreclosure data. According to RealtyTrac, foreclosure activity fell 7% in October compared to November, but is still 28% compared to a year ago. This is the lowest level since June.

The news isn't as rosey as it sounds though. Part of the decline is due to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac suspending some foreclosures as well as other State laws that have delayed foreclosures. Governor Corzine is also contemplating a similar moratorium on foreclosures. Without workouts that work, which many have been having a hard time getting, this may just prolong the process. From the article:

“The forces leading to foreclosure are hard to offset in most cases and impossible in many,” Robert Hall, a Stanford University professor and chairman of the National Bureau of Economic Research committee that calls the beginnings and ends of recessions, wrote in an e-mail. “Job loss is a major source of defaults at all times, and job losses are running at extreme levels now.”

October was the highest month with 111 properties scheduled for foreclosure auction in Bergen County NJ. November scheduled auctions dropped to 79 which was closer to September.

One of the charts on BergenJerseyForeclosure.com's home page shows the number of scheduled foreclosure auctions in Bergen County.

At first, November and December were looking like they would also be record setting months for Bergen County Auctions but it seems that auctions were pushed further back. There are currently 333 properties tentatively scheduled for foreclosure auction in January 2009. That's 3 times the number in October.

I've never seen such a large spike since I started this site. For comparison, the chart on the right is a snapshot from October 23rd. As you can see there were more than 180 properties scheduled for auction in October and a similar number in November. As auctions were postponed the wave started moving toward the right until we got to the big spike for January that we are now seeing.

If October was a big wave, January looks like a tsunami.

That number will drop as some properties resolve their foreclosure before the auction or postpone it. I wouldn't be surprised if the sheer volume may be too much for the Sheriff to auction off in a single month and may be spread out more for scheduling reasons.

It's been nearly 5 months since the first effort to stem foreclosures, the Housing Rescue Bill of 2008, was enacted but it did little if anything to solve the problem. Since then, trillions more were set aside to deal with the economic problems but the outlook isn't any better.

We're still seeing record unemployment numbers while AIG still plans to give out bonuses of as much as $4 million. Those people getting the bonuses must work for the 20% of the company that the US Taxpayer doesn't own as a result of the billions of dollars they received through bailouts, including $40 billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). Because I don't see any other way that a company can justify giving a bonus to anyone after having failed so miserably.

Today S&P released the September Case Shiller Home Price Indices data which show house prices are still falling.

The August Case Shiller NY data showed a smaller month over month decline of only .16% but September more than made up for it with a month over month decline of 1.04%. This was the largest single month drop since February. Last September the MoM drop was only .39% and the YoY drop was 3.60% Compared to last year, the NY Metro index is down 7.29%. In the past 27 months, only 2 showed positive MoM changes.

The Case Shiller tiered data continues to show that low priced homes are the hardest hit. They have fallen the most in value and at a greater rate. Low, mid and high priced homes have fallen, 10.36%, 8.11% and 5.73% respectively compared to last year as indicated by the following charts.

Yesterday the August, 2008 S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices came out.

According to the index, house prices in the area are still falling but not as fast as they were previously. In the NY-Metro Area which includes Bergen County, house prices fell .24% compared to last month and 6.92% compared to August 2007.

For comparison, the Composite 10 Index fell 1.10% compared to July 2008 and 17.72% compared to August 2007. The Composite 20 Index fell 1.03% compared to July 2008 and 16.62% compared to a year ago.

For the past 2 years, the NY Metro index has been falling every month except for June 2006.

I've been a little quiet on the blog lately as I decided this weekend to come up with a new design for the foreclosure listings part of the site. The site's only been online a few months and this is the third design change. The last one only lasted a couple of weeks before I got sick of it. I was so happy with it at first but it didn't turn out like I had expected. I thought a few fixes might have done it but instead decided to just start from scratch. The house and gavel image did make it.

The blog design will match at some point but getting some more features on the listings is the current priority.

Some more features are in the works but I couldn't stand looking at the last design anymore.  They'll be coming soon but if you use this site and have any suggestions feel free to leave a comment on this entry.

This one should be easier to navigate and nicer to look at. There are also some changes to help speed things up.

I like lightweight designs and I tried to stick to that. The only heavyweight items are the charts but they load nearly instantly on broadband connections and fast enough on dial-up from my testing. They are a lot nicer and easier to view details for than the previous charts I used in the last design.

There are three on the home page. The first shows the 10 cities with the most upcoming auctions. The other two show some historical foreclosure data. One shows the number of foreclosure auctions in Bergen County by month as well as the average judgment, the other shows average judgment and average winning bid by month for properties that have been purchased at auction.

Instead of landing on a city page, the home page now shows a snapshot of activity including some of the recent blog postings and links to other local foreclosure news.

Functionally, the listings page has stayed the same, I've been pretty happy with that layout. The look has just changed a bit. There is also a chart showing specific foreclosure auction activity by month for that town. The number of foreclosures, properties sold at auction, average judgment, average judgment and winning bid of properties sold at auction are combined into one chart.

Nationwide preforeclosure, foreclosure and REO listings are also available through RealtyTrac for other parts of the country.

Anyone think Zestimates would be good to have?

I thought it might be a good idea to try and get some sort of valuation on here to go along with the listings so I've been playing around with Zillow's Zestimate. It may provide useful information as far as resale value but I compared a couple dozen recent properties that have been sold at auction and the Zestimate doesn't seem to help with coming up with a max bid.

The Zestimate was an average of 83% above the winning bid but it wasn't consistent. The maximum difference was 236% above and the minimum was -2% below the winning bid.

It might be useful to know but not something you can use to determine how much you will be willing to bid. Do you think it's a feature that should be added to the site?

What else would you like to see in the next set of changes?

I noticed a number of you that find this site come here searching for property tax rates in Bergen County. Though I've mentioned property taxes in some posts I didn't have the information online.

So that you guys can find what you're looking for I whipped up a quick tool that will show the historical property taxes in Bergen County for each municipality.

Simply select the city from the drop down list and the chart will change. To see the value for a particular year, hover your mouse over the appropriate dot and a tool tip should come up with the details.

Let me know what you think. If you have any problems or suggestions with this chart tool, please leave a comment.

Bergen County NJ Property Tax Rates

The data comes from the New Jersey Treasury's Division of Taxation.