Percentage of Foreclosures Rises Sixfold : Housing: Analyst blames the weak national economy. He says owners are no longer able to sell their homes to pay off mortgages.

The percentage of mortgage foreclosures in Ventura County has jumped more than sixfold since 1989, a TRW analyst said Wednesday.

The numbers show the nose-diving national economy hitting home in Ventura County, said Nima Mattagh, a market and research analyst for TRW REDI Property Data of Riverside.

In past years, relatively affluent property owners often were able to catch up with payments or sell their houses to pay off their mortgages before foreclosure, he said.

Now they cannot because they have been laid off, their salaries have been cut, or the value of their homes and businesses has dropped significantly, leaving them owing more than they own, he said.

The decline in equity has strapped many property owners, said Milton Airey, a Ventura mortgage broker.

“Especially in some areas in Camarillo, Oxnard and Ventura, the amount that they actually owe on their property is more than the property is worth,” said Airey, owner of the Ventura-based First Allstate Lending Co.

“When you’re up against it and you’re paying on a dead dog, it’s like paying on a couch that burned up last year,” Airey said. “It’s really hard for people, especially if they’re in an unemployment situation or working for a company that’s lowering costs and that’s affecting their income.”

In the first six months of 1992, mortgage lenders foreclosed on nearly 25% of property owners who were served with default notices after they failed to keep up with their payments, said the TRW report.

“There are more foreclosures taking place among people who are behind in their payments,” Mattagh said. “I think it does actually show that the financial distress among property owners has become more prevalent.”

Yet while the sheer number of foreclosures in Ventura County also increased--from 3.1 per 1,000 parcels in 1991 to 5.4 per 1,000 in 1992, for a total of 1,028--that number grew more slowly than in Los Angeles County, where foreclosures increased from 3.3 per 1,000 to 6.7 per 1,000 for a total of 13,334, Mattagh said.

The decline in property values has affected more than homeowners.

Eugene Rodriguez, president of E-Z Home Loans of Ventura, said he is shutting down his company and going independent partly because of the drop in equity and the loss of business.

“People that bought in ‘89, ‘90, ‘91, those people paid more than the property’s worth now,” he said. “Therefore, they cannot borrow against it, and therefore the value of their home is oftentimes not as much as they have borrowed. People just walk away from their homes. They file bankruptcy. The only people that make out are the lawyers.”

Foreclosures devalue properties around them and make first-time buyers skittish, he said.

They also make lending institutions nervous, causing them to tighten already strict guidelines for approving loans--and effectively decreasing the number of loans that are made, Airey said.

The result is that many once-profitable Ventura County real estate speculators are losing money, he said.

“I had lunch today and heard terrible stories about people who survived for this long, and their investment properties are going into foreclosure,” Airey said. “These people are formerly heavy hitters--and they just can’t sell them.”

Meanwhile, a report released in Ventura County on Wednesday showed that commercial real estate vacancy rates are dropping slightly.

“It’s not great news, but it’s good news,” said Thad Seligman, senior vice president and district manager of the San Francisco-based Grubb & Ellis Co., which released the report.

“The bad news is that real estate values declined significantly in 1992,” he said. “There may continue to be some downward movement that could last the next three to five years.”

Vacancy rates in Ventura County office buildings decreased from 27.6% in December, 1991, to 24.5% last month, the report said. The retail shopping center vacancy rate dipped slightly from 9.3% a year ago to 8.7% at the end of 1992, and the vacancy rate for industrial property dropped from 16.8% to 14.7%.

The company’s figures are based on surveys of properties greater than 10,000 square feet.

A report by the Anaheim-based CB Commercial Real Estate Group Inc. showed similar numbers.

Ventura, Oxnard and Camarillo were hit the hardest, with an office vacancy rate of 27.8% as of December, 1992. For industrial property, Newbury Park showed the highest vacancy rate--27.6%.

A recovery may be starting, said Timothy Grant, senior associate for CB Commercial, but “it’s still very tenuous. It’s not like we’re sounding the trumpets. We’re still in hard times.”

However, Bill Cote, a board member of the Ventura County Economic Development Assn., disputed the real estate companies’ cautiously optimistic reports.

“We’re still losing jobs,” Cote said, citing the loss of about 8,500 positions in the county during the last two years. “Companies are moving. Companies are cutting back.”

Times correspondent Jane Hulse contributed to this story.