U.S. home foreclosures rise in January

Professor Peabody · Feb 10, 2011

U.S. home foreclosures rise in January

By Leah Schnurr

NEW YORK | Thu Feb 10, 2011 12:42am EST

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. home foreclosures jumped 12 percent last month, but the sharp divide between states suggests the industry remains backlogged by investigations into the foreclosure process.

According to a report from real estate data firm RealtyTrac, lenders foreclosed on 78,133 properties in January, up 12 percent from the month before, but down 11 percent from January a year ago.

Bank seizures at states with non-judicial foreclosure processes jumped 23 percent, while states with a judicial process saw a decrease of 7 percent.

"It suggests the system is still frozen up. We should have seen a much larger increase in both overall activity and bank repossession," said Rick Sharga, senior vice president at RealtyTrac.

The number of foreclosure filings, which includes default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, rose 1 percent to 261,333 in January. Compared to January last year, filings are down 17 percent.

The report also showed 1 in every 497 houses received a foreclosure filing during the month. Five states -- California, Florida, Michigan, Arizona and Illinois -- continued to account for more than half of all foreclosure filings. California alone accounted for more than one quarter.

Nevada, Arizona and California also had the highest foreclosure rates. Nevada had the country's highest foreclosure rate for the forty-ninth month in a row. One in every 93 Nevada homes received a foreclosure filing in January, more than five times the national average, RealtyTrac said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011...E7190XD20110210?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews
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Nevada, Arizona and California? I do believe these three states have the largest population of illegals. Even a $2500 a month house payment is pretty cheap when you divide it 10 or 15 ways. If that's the case, I hope the banking whores who were so willing to lend to them take it in the shorts HARD. I also hope the illegals going home due to the bad economy take their financed cars with them and the folks who financed them eat that too. It would serve them right.

waltky · Feb 24, 2011

Lookin' for a good deal? - buy a foreclosed home...

Discount for Foreclosed Homes Widened in 2010
Thursday, February 24, 2011 - The gap between the average sale price of a foreclosed home and that of other properties grew wider last year, giving homebuyers who snapped up bank-owned homes big discounts.

And homebuyers can expect to see more of those bargains this year, because fewer foreclosed homes were sold in 2010 than were taken back by banks, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. Buyers who purchased a foreclosed home last year got, on average, a 28 percent discount to a non-foreclosure sale. That's up from a 27 percent average discount in 2009, RealtyTrac said. While only a slight increase, the trend suggests a widening price spread between foreclosure sales and other types of residential properties.

Foreclosed homes made up nearly 26 percent of all home sales last year, according to RealtyTrac. That's down from 29 percent in 2009 but up from 23 percent in 2008. Traditionally, foreclosures account for less than 10 percent of all home sales. In all, 831,574 foreclosed properties were sold last year, including those in some stage of foreclosure but not yet taken back by lenders, the firm said. That's down 31 percent from 2009 and down nearly 14 percent from 2008. Sales of homes outside of the foreclosure process declined nearly 19 percent in 2010 from the prior year, according to RealtyTrac.

While the pace of foreclosure sales slowed, lenders stepped up their home repossessions, taking back more than 1 million homes last year. That deepened the so-called shadow inventory of foreclosed homes that have yet to hit the market. Experts contend that the housing market won't fully recover until banks find buyers for those properties. "We need to clear out the inventory if the market is going to come back," Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac.

Banks are reluctant to put too many foreclosed homes on the market at once, because they would face booking sizeable losses on the sales. Generally, about 30 percent of banks' foreclosure inventory is on the market, Sharga said. More foreclosure sales, however, would almost certainly send overall home values lower in many markets, because foreclosed homes often sell at a sharp discount to other properties. Already, housing experts predict home prices will slide another 5 percent this year. "You could have a scenario where housing prices could be pushed lower," Sharga said.

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waltky · Sep 15, 2011

Uncle Ferd says the housing market gonna lead us into double-dip recession...

Foreclosures rise in August
September 15, 2011: Foreclosure filings rose in August, as more homebuyers fell behind on their mortgage payments.

Filings were up 7% compared to July, but were still 33% lower than they were a year ago -- marking the eleventh straight month of year-over-year declines, according to RealtyTrac, a leading online marketer of foreclosed properties. According to the report, 228,098 homes in the U.S. received some kind of foreclosure filing in August. Default notices, which typically initiate the foreclosure process, surged more 33% from July. Foreclosure auctions and bank repossessions, which come later in the process, both fell slightly.

The increase in default notices may signal that lenders are starting to finally push through foreclosure paperwork that was previously delayed by the "robo-signing" controversy last fall, said RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio. "It also foreshadows more bank repossessions in the coming months as these new foreclosures make their way through the process," he said in a release. The good news is that bank repossessions have been falling. Lenders repossessed 64,813 homes in August, a six-month low and a 37% decline after bank repossessions hit a peak in September last year. Meanwhile, foreclosure auctions were scheduled for 84,405 homes, the lowest number in more than three years.

Not surprisingly, Nevada, California and Arizona housing markets continued to be the hardest hit by foreclosures. Nevada has had the nation's highest foreclosure rate for more than four-and-a-half years now, and even though bank repossessions and auctions both fell in August, the state saw default notices increase 31%. One in every 118 Nevada homes received a foreclosure filing in August. California came in second place, with one in every 226 homes in foreclosure, and Arizona, with one in every 248 homes, was third.

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waltky · Oct 27, 2011

Obama workin' hard to save the day an' peoples homes...

Obama administration mulling paydowns to prevent foreclosures
10/26/11 - The Obama administration is mulling ways to promote principal paydowns of mortgage loans to help struggling homeowners prevent foreclosures, according to House Democrats who met with a top housing regulator Wednesday.

Edward DeMarco, the acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) the independent agency that regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is weighing a proposal to allow bankrupt homeowners to temporarily pay down their principal balance, interest-free, in an effort to reduce negative equity, the Democrats said. DeMarco, according to the Democrats, said the strategy has a lot of promise and strikes me as being responsible. He told the 19 Democrats with whom he met that he would weigh the proposal and get back to them within two weeks, the lawmakers said. A spokesperson for the FHFA declined to comment on Wednesday's meeting.

The Democrats said encouraging principal paydowns would go a long way toward stabilizing the volatile housing market. "If Mr. DeMarco actually works with us to implement this proposal, it would be an important step to address this crisis," Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), senior Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said in a statement following the meeting. Sponsored by Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), the Democrats' proposal would allow underwater homeowners who file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy to skip interest payments for five years. Instead, all of their monthly mortgage payments would go toward paying down the principal balance. In return, homeowners would agree to settle any pending claims against their mortgage servicers.

"Coordination with the bankruptcy process would make these reductions more likely to succeed than other types of loan modifications, while also limiting the program to those who truly need it," Lofgren and a long list of California Democrats wrote in an Oct. 12 letter to President Obama promoting the idea. Many Democrats have been at odds with the administration over its housing policy for years a conflict that gained greater attention this year after the high-profile Cummings joined the fight. Earlier this week, the FHFA sought to improve its anti-foreclosure efforts with a number of reforms to the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP), a 2009 designed to help underwater homeowners obtain cheaper loans.

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Professor Peabody · Nov 4, 2011

Glad to see 'em go.

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U.S. home foreclosures rise in January

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