Look, I want to walk you through something important because there's a lot of noise out there right now about foreclosures. According to HousingWire, foreclosure filings did jump 21 percent year over year in the first half of 2026, and naturally that's got people worried. But here's the thing—the broader picture tells us this is nowhere near what happened during the 2008 crisis, and I want to show you why I'm not losing sleep over it.
The fundamentals today are just completely different from what we saw back then. Right now, homeowners are sitting on massive equity, with a loan-to-value ratio of only 45 percent compared to around 85 percent back in 2008. About forty percent of homes don't even have mortgages anymore, and when people do have loans, the vast majority are 30-year fixed rate mortgages, mostly under 6 percent. There's no payment shock happening like there was when adjustable rates reset and monthly payments jumped on struggling homeowners.
Here's another way to look at it: we're seeing foreclosure activity that's actually normal by historical standards. According to the reporting, we've traditionally had between one and four percent of mortgage loans in some stage of delinquency in any given year. The real crisis of 2008 took years to build up because of a massive credit boom that happened from 2002 to 2005 with toxic loans everywhere. None of that is happening now. New listings data is actually sitting at historically low levels—nothing like the quarter million to four hundred thousand weekly listings we saw during the actual bubble years.
The data shows us something pretty clear: back in 2010, more than 23 percent of homes were underwater, and that's what really drives forced sales. Today that situation is reversed, with homeowners holding strong equity positions and having put down larger down payments than any time in this century. We also have stronger lending rules now from Dodd-Frank and better bankruptcy protections that keep people in their homes longer before anything drastic happens.
What I am seeing locally here in the Bay Area and East Bay is consistent with what these numbers show nationally—yes, foreclosures tick up every year, but we're not looking at distressed inventory flooding the market or desperate sellers. Our strong equity positions and the fixed-rate mortgages most of us have locked in mean homeowners have breathing room that didn't exist in 2008. If you're worried about a crash affecting your plans to buy or sell, the underlying credit conditions just don't support that story.
