Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
The latest Realty Trac Foreclosure Market Report was released yesterday, and shows foreclosure filings, bank repossessions, default notices and scheduled auctions for the month of August were reported on 193,508 US homes. This is an increase of 1% compared to July, but is 15% lower than in August 2011.
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Darren Blomquist, vice president of Realty Trac said “Bucking the national trend, deferred foreclosure activity boiled over in several states in August. In judicial states such as Florida, Illinois, New Jersey and New York, this was a continuation of a trend we've been seeing for several months now. The increases in Florida and Illinois pushed foreclosure rates in those states to the two highest in the country-supplanting the non-judicial states of Arizona, California, Georgia and Nevada. Previous to August, the nation's top two state foreclosure rates have been from those four non-judicial states every month since December 2010. Meanwhile foreclosure activity in most non-judicial states stayed on a downward trajectory in August, with a few exceptions."
In Washington State there was a 38% annual increase in foreclosure activity in August following 16 consecutive months of year over year declines. This increase is likely to be due to lenders catching up with foreclosures delayed due to a state law allowing homeowners to request mediation. It's likely this pattern will be repeated in other states that passed legislation delaying the foreclosure process.
The highest foreclosure rate for August was for Illinois, as one out of every 298 housing units has a foreclosure filing. This this is the first month Illinois has been ranked number one since Realty Trac began issuing this report in January 2005. Some 20 states showed year over year increases in the foreclosure activity, led by judicial foreclosure states including New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Illinois and Pennsylvania. Foreclosure activity in the 24 non-judicial states and District of Columbia combined decreased 31% annually, although 15 non--judicial states and DC saw monthly increases in foreclosure activity, including Kansas at 61%, Utah at 41%, Colorado at 25%, and Washington at 23%.
Foreclosure starts in August decreased by 13% after reaching a 17 month high in August 2011. The number of bank repossessions in August decreased by 2% compared to the previous month, and decreased by 19% annually.
