larger view

I put more than 85 miles on the ol' trip odometer Thursday driving around Bako to take pictures of (very) recently sold homes.

The result is here.

This wasn't a scientifically random sample, but is hopefully a representative cross-section of what's being bought these days.

Here's the methodology. I went to the Hall of Records Wednesday and looked through deed transfers recorded Monday, Tuesday and (part of) Wednesday.

I tried to pick an assortment: Different banks, for example, selling foreclosured homes. A range of builders closing new-home construction.

I also tried to find "normal" sales of existing homes....those transferring from one person to another. But after I got back to the office to research property histories, they all turned out to have been short sales!

I wasn't trying to ignore the northeast; I ran out of time Thursday to make it to the sale (in K Hov's Four Seasons) on my list.

It turned out ALL of the existing-home sales — which were foreclosures or shorts, as it turned out — had been part of the 2005-2006 financing frenzy.

One house I never made it to, near Edison and Fairfax, had been bought for $37k or so in the 1970s. It fell to the classic ATM syndrome during the '05 bubble: a series of equity loans for hundreds of thousands that went bad. It foreclosed.

Anyway, I hope folks enjoy grazing through the properties.

Have a great Labor Day weekend!

--- Gretchen Wenner, staff writer