According to The Cromford Report , they “are starting to see a few more pre-foreclosure listings” here in the Phoenix area. Here’s their commentary from September 10th:

“Although they are still at very low levels compared to the long-term average, we are starting to see a few more pre-foreclosure listings. You will miss a lot of these if you rely on the MLS listing information. A home may be listed for sale well before a Notice of Trustee Sale is filed, but when it is filed we will catch that in our daily clean-up process and add a Pre-foreclosure tag to the listing. Listing agents often forget to do that (or decide not to).

At the moment we have around 100 pre-foreclosures in our database, but ARMLS is showing only 50 or so. Whether they are Short Sales or not is open to interpretation. Most homes will have some positive equity but it is certainly possible that it will be eliminated by costs incurred during close of escrow.

It is hard to compute the total amount of debt attached to a property. Even a lender can sometimes not do that, because there may be more than one loan if a HELOC or other loan has been taken out. If there are late payments, then these payments plus penalties and interest will need to be added to the debt.

100 pre-foreclosures is still a tiny number across 20,000 active listings. Back in 2010 we had some 19,000 pre-foreclosure and short sale listings. Levels of distress are low, but for those homeowners involved it is very real. The lack of significant appreciation over the last 2 years means negative equity can pop-up for anyone whose circumstances change or who overpaid for a property. We see some listings that are unsold fix-and-flips and that hard money interest can build up quickly if the home fails to sell quickly. A hard money lender will quickly foreclose to safeguard their position if the investor fails to make the monthly payments.”