CA Foreclosures Surge, With No Peak in Sight

California foreclosure sales surged by 40% in October (and by 568% from the level recorded a year earlier) and they are unlikely to peak until late next year, according to ForeclosureRadar, Discovery Bay, Calif.The company reported that 12,336 California foreclosures (with a total loan value of $5.0 billion) were sold at auction in October, compared with 8,118 (with a total value of $3.6 billion) in September. "We see no sign of a foreclosure peak at this point, and we don't expect to see one until the third or fourth quarter of 2008 at the earliest," said Sean O'Toole, founder and chief executive officer of ForeclosureRadar. "The sales we are seeing now are from missed payments in March. So current auction sales really have not yet been impacted by either August's liquidity crunch or the [adjustable-rate mortgage] reset peaks this month and again in March '08." ForeclosureRadar, a foreclosure listings and software company, can be found on the Web at http://www.foreclosureradar.com.