Foreclosure Auctions Just Hit a Post-Pandemic High. In California, Equity Is Still the Exit.

Auction.com reported on October 22, 2026 that completed foreclosure auction volume rose 25% from a year earlier in the third quarter — the highest quarterly total since the first quarter of 2020 (The MortgagePoint, October 22, 2026).

A number like that gets read two ways, and both are lazy: the crash is here, or it is a rounding error off a pandemic floor. The read that helps a California homeowner is narrower — these are counts of a legal process that runs on recorded dates.

What the third-quarter numbers say

• ·Completed auctions rose 25% year over year — a seventh straight quarter of annual gains, and the highest volume since the first quarter of 2020 (The MortgagePoint, October 22, 2026)
• ·FHA-insured loans drove most of it: FHA auction volume rose 73%, the highest since the first quarter of 2019 (same report)
• ·Bank-owned (REO) auction volume rose 18% year over year, the highest since the third quarter of 2020 (same report)
• ·Fourth-quarter scheduled volume is up 11% for October, 31% for November and 15% for December year over year, which Auction.com’s Daren Blomquist reads as both measures still climbing (HousingWire, October 23, 2026)
• ·The reports’ own caveat: these are Auction.com marketplace figures, not national totals, and completed volume is still below early 2020

California is in the count — and so is California equity

ATTOM’s August 2026 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, released September 17, 2026, counted 2,565 foreclosure starts in California — third-most of any state, behind Florida and Texas — and 40,277 properties nationally with a foreclosure filing, up 13% year over year (ATTOM, September 17, 2026).

Now set that beside the other number. Cotality’s Q2 2026 Homeowner Equity Report, released September 10, 2026, put average homeowner equity in California at roughly $623,000, second only to Hawaii, and found about 2.1% of mortgaged U.S. homes in negative equity (Cotality, September 10, 2026).

That pairing is the story, and it is not the 2008 story. Equity, though, does not stop a trustee’s sale. A completed sale does — and only if it lands inside the calendar.

The calendar, in the statute’s own words

California runs a nonjudicial process: recorded notices and a trustee, not a courtroom. Civil Code § 2924 provides that not less than three months shall elapse from the filing of the notice of default (Cal. Civ. Code § 2924), and § 2924f requires the notice of sale to be posted on the property and first published at least 20 days before the sale (Cal. Civ. Code § 2924f).

One provision matters most when a home has equity. Civil Code § 2924f(e)(1) provides that for residential property of no more than four units, delivering a copy of a purchase agreement to the trustee at least five business days before the scheduled sale — by certified mail or tracked overnight delivery — requires the sale be reset to a date at least 45 days after the trustee receives it, and may not be used to postpone the sale more than once (§ 2924f).

Read plainly: a signed buyer, delivered on time and in the specified manner, buys 45 days, once. A listing that has not yet produced a contract does not. This is general information about published statutes, not legal advice — anyone with a recorded notice of default should speak with a California real estate attorney or a HUD-approved housing counselor.

Why the cost of the sale stops being an abstraction

When a sale has to clear a loan balance, arrears and the cost of selling, every dollar of transaction cost comes out of what the homeowner keeps. In an ordinary sale the commission is an annoyance; against a deadline it is part of whether the math closes at all.

On a $1,000,000 home — above the $899,720 statewide median the California Association of Realtors reported for September 2026, and an ordinary price across much of the Bay Area, the only C.A.R. region with a month-over-month price increase that month, up 4.2% from August (C.A.R. September home sales and price report, October 19, 2026) — a traditional listing-side commission of about 3% runs roughly $30,000. Realonomie lists your home on the same MLS every agent uses, with a licensed California broker, for $999 at MLS launch (non-refundable; it covers photography, signage, the dedicated property page and marketing) plus $5,000 paid out of escrow only if the home actually closes. On that $1,000,000 home that is $5,999 in total against roughly $30,000: $24K+ you keep. Above $1,000,000 the closing fee adds $2,500 for each additional million — see the full fee schedule.

C.A.R. reported 35.9% of September’s California sales closed above $1,000,000, up from 35.2% in August (same release) — that anchor is not an exotic one. The schedule reads the same in Redding, Fresno and Palo Alto; it does not price off your zip code.

What a homeowner actually controls

• ·The recorded date the clock runs from — not the first missed payment
• ·Whether the home reaches the open market early enough for a buyer, not an auction bidder, to set the price
• ·The list price on day one
• ·What the sale costs to run

We do not forecast prices or rates, and nothing here is a prediction — Auction.com’s outlook for the fourth quarter and 2027 belongs to Auction.com. This article is general market information, not legal, tax or financial advice.