Walk through some of the region's newest neighborhoods and you'll discover hundreds upon hundreds of houses lying empty. Their owners, victims of foreclosure, have long since moved on.

While only some of those are currently on the market, you'll find it next to impossible to come upon a foreclosed home for sale in Sacramento's central city. That's because there's currently only one.

The desirability of living in the grid and of its housing stock have kept prices fairly stable and made the area nearly immune to the foreclosure crisis, unlike outlying areas of the city and fast-growing suburbs like Natomas and Elk Grove, according to local real estate agents.

"Downtown has held its value, because what we have downtown, you can't replicate in new construction areas," said David Kirrene, a real estate broker with Windermere Dunnigan Realtors.

"You've got the character of the old homes -- every house is different. You've got the tree-lined streets. And look at just how long these homes have lasted; the quality of the homes," he said. "I think with new construction areas -- you can get that in 'Any City, USA' ."

In addition, homeowners in the grid -- the area bounded by the Sacramento River on the west, the Union Pacific railroad tracks/B Street on the north, Alhambra Boulevard on the east and Broadway to the south -- are mostly more experienced, established buyers who bought their homes before this decade's new housing boom and who got fixed-rate mortgages, said Elizabeth Weintraub, an agent in Lyon Real Estate's Midtown office and a home-buying columnist for About.com.

Right now, only one foreclosed home -- a house on 25th Street in Midtown -- is currently on the market in the grid, according to Weintraub and Tabetha Holyfield, a real estate agent for Century 21 All Professional near Arden Fair Mall. That's out of 74 homes currently for sale in Midtown in the 95816 zip code and downtown in 95814 and 95811.

It's another story in the fastest-growing nearby towns. Natomas has 145 bank-owned homes for sale and Elk Grove has 139, said Weintraub. In the city, Del Paso has 44 on the market, Oak Park has 41, South Sacramento has 16 and Rosemont has seven, according to MetroList Services numbers provided by Weintraub and Holyfield.

Those numbers don't tell the whole tale. The actual number of foreclosed homes -- not just foreclosed homes on the market -- in the city and in particular, the grid, isn't kept by any government agency or a one-stop service accessible to real estate pros or consumers.

However, numbers are kept for the entire county. After a dip in foreclosures in recent months, Sacramento County is seeing a resurgence in the number of trustee's deeds filed when banks foreclose on homes. June already has 1,067, while May had 869, April had 897 and March had 919, according to figures from the Sacramento County Assessor's Office.

Before that, the monthly numbers of houses slipping out of owner's hands hadn't fallen below 1,071 (the figure for January 2009) since December 2007.

Two other problems with ferreting out the actual number of foreclosures are the "short sales" homes that are on the market to technically avoid foreclosure and all the foreclosed homes the banks are now holding back from the market, real estate agents said.

A short sale is an agreement between the homeowner and bank that allows the homeowner to avoid foreclosure. Short sales involve homeowners who need to sell either because they're undergoing hardship and can't afford the mortgage payments, or because the house is upside down and the owners owe more than the house is worth.

Banks can be negotiated with to allow owners to sell houses -- sometimes at half the price the owners paid -- if the bank gets all the money from the sale. The bank will then release the loan. These short-sale homes aren't listed as foreclosures, said Weintraub, who may be the city's top short-sales agent. She currently has 20 short-sale homes listed.

Currently, 58.6 percent in of the homes listed in Sacramento County are short sales, she said, adding, "Short sales are replacing foreclosures as the hot commodity."

In addition, banks are selling foreclosed houses in bulk at 50 cents on the dollar to investors, who turn around and list those properties at twice what they paid; yet those houses aren't advertised as foreclosures when they go back on the market.

Also, housing prices have gotten so low due to the glut of foreclosed homes that banks are not putting them on the market, real estate agents said.

"They're really controlling the market. So it's giving us a false sense of what's really going on," said Holyfield.

At the start of 2009, the number of bank-owned homes that were active real estate listings in Sacramento County and parts of nearby Yolo and Placer counties totaled 2,500. As of June 15, the number was only 909, she said.

"They're hoarding them. It's what's known as shadow inventory," Weintraub said. "Yet we all know the number of foreclosures are continually going up."

Most people who've lost their homes to foreclosure in other areas were first-time owners who bought between 2002 and 2006 in a time when home loans were too easy to get, and so the number of buyers skyrocketed. The demand inflated housing prices for both tract houses in brand-new subdivisions and lower-end houses in established neighborhoods and fueled a construction boom that created new neighborhoods.

At the same time, these people purchased with "100 percent financing," so they didn't put down any -- or at least not significant -- down payments. They also got adjustable-rate mortgages, which greatly increased their payments after the first few years.

"There were so many first-time home buyers. It didn't matter who you were. They were giving away homes like lollipops," said Holyfield.

Weintraub agreed, saying, "A lot of the people in trouble out in the suburbs are really people who never should have qualified to buy."

After the bottom fell out of the housing market, house prices plummeted and many people owed more than their houses were worth.

In the central city where there's no room for new home construction, seasoned owners have held onto their homes for a long time. The housing market has remained far more stable and prices have stayed relatively flat in comparison.

"We don't have the roller-coaster prices like we have in other areas," said Holyfield. "We didn't have those big explosions coming into Midtown, buying those properties and now selling those properties. You have established people living in the inner city, instead of having a whole neighborhood of people who just moved there in the last 10 years."

House prices never went up as high in the grid as they did in new areas, and now they've gone down only about 25 percent, contrasted with a 50- to 60-percent decrease in other areas, said Kirrene.

"I've always heard these are the first to go up in value and the last to go down in value," he said. The median sales prices of a 1600-square-foot, three-bedroom, single-family home is currently $308,000 in the grid, he said.

In 2008, 27 percent (13 out of 49) of the single-family homes sold in the 95816 zip code and 37 percent in 95814 and 95811 were foreclosures, while 70 to 80 percent of those sold in other regions were foreclosures, said Craig Dunnigan, who owns Prudential Dunnigan Real Estate.

From Dec., 27, 2008, a total of 670 foreclosed homes have sold in Elk Grove and 733 in Natomas, said Weintraub. Fifteen sold downtown and in 95816, which may include East Sacramento in this figure.

Real estate agents cited many reasons why people want to live in the central city and buy the houses that are here. Most of the homes were built before 1940. A sizable number were built before 1900. In the last six months, 20 of the active, pending and sold houses were built before 1900 and two before 1880, Kirrene said.

These homes were built better, with charm and quality craftsmanship that makes them higher-end properties. People also love being close to vibrant Midtown and downtown, with all the restaurants, shops, clubs, open park space and access to both the Sacramento and American rivers. People who work there don't want to commute, and they enjoy easy access to freeways, real estate agents said.

"People gravitate toward homes with character, and this is where people are going to find them," said Weintraub. "It's a desirable place to live."