Are Antelope Valley Short Sales Increasing?

Short sales in the Antelope Valley, including Palmdale and Lancaster,  are growing in volume, but need to improve  in numbers before a home buyer or seller can rely on a closing in a reasonable time. In the past I’ve written about issues with short sales and how small a percentage of short sale listings actually go to a closing and sale. You can read about what I’ve last written about short sales here. Has it improved? I’ll give you some recent numbers.
First, keep in mind that different agents will pull statistics differently and get different numbers. Also, as an agent enters a listing, it might not be tagged properly for reasonable statistics. Remember the old computer saying, “Garbage in, garbage out.” That’s one reason the local Multiple Listing Service always uses the following disclaimer:
All information deemed reliable, but not guaranteed. All information herein has not been verified and is not guaranteed.
I am only using Single Family Residences for my study –no land, no condos, townhomes, or mobile homes.
I am only using MLS listings that are in the Antelope Valley and not listings that are for homes out of area.
That said, there are about 3396 active listings as of January 7th, 2009 of which 943 are listed as short pays.
There are 1596 homes pending in escrow of which 161 are tagged as short pays on their listing.
What are the chances that these 161 will actually close escrow?  Let’s follow recent months statistics.

December 2008 had 759 closings in the category I’ve set up — only 20 were short sales. November had 630 sales — 25 of them were short sales.October 2008 was a good month for short sales. Out of 820 closings ( most of them were bank owned foreclosures) there were 64 short sale closings. September 2008 had 33 short pay closings out of 714. So while short sales are closing in increasing numbers from a year ago when about 7 to 10 closed per month, most are still not making it to a closing. While there are some experienced agents in selling short sales out there, it’s still not a certain thing for most, even with the bank’s loss mitigation departments working with all parties much more than a year ago.