(RealShare Orange County convenes at the Hyatt Regency, Irvine, August 16. and Save the date: RealShare Apartments comes to the Westin Bonaventure, Los Angeles, October 24.)
IRVINE, CA-The road to housing-industry stabilization remains rocky, but encouraging. US foreclosure activity decreased 3% in July from the previous month, down 10% from July 2011, yet the number of properties beginning the foreclosure process on an annual basis has risen for the third straight month, according to RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosure properties.
The firm’s most recent US Foreclosure Market Report indicates that foreclosure filings, including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, were reported on 191,925 U.S. properties in July, and one in every 686 US housing units nationally had a foreclosure filing during the month. “Recent foreclosure activity patterns vary significantly from state to state, often hinging on the level of dysfunction that exists in each state’s foreclosure process,” said Daren Blomquist, VP of RealtyTrac, in a prepared statement.
Other reports on the housing market within the last month point to a recovery trend. As GlobeSt.com reported in July, Recent CoreLogic research shows that the current residential shadow inventory as of April 2012 fell to 1.5 million units, representing a supply of four months. This was a 14.8% drop from April 2011, when shadow inventory stood at 1.8 million units, or a six-months’ supply, which is approximately the same level as the country was experiencing in October 2008. Also, foreclosure-related sales have picked up, particularly pre-foreclosure sales, according to RealtyTrac’s CEO Brandon Moore, who said in July, “Pre-foreclosure sales hit a three-year high in the first quarter even as the average pre-foreclosure sales price dropped to a record low for our report.”
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| Foreclosure starts increased on a year-over-year basis in 27 states, led by Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Massachusetts—all judicial foreclosure states. |
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| Despite a 17% year-over-year decrease in foreclosure activity, the Stockton, CA, metro area posted the nation’s highest metro foreclosure rate in July. Immediately following Stockton in the rankings were the California metro areas of Vallejo-Fairfield, Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario and Modesto. |
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| The number of properties with foreclosure filings in California has been descending gradually since its peak in October ’09 as opposed to the number in Florida, which dropped off dramatically in January ’11 and has remained at roughly the same level since then. |
Graphs and chart courtesy of RealtyTrac. For RealtyTrac’s complete July ’12 US Foreclosure Market Report, click here. For more information on distressed asset investment, click here.
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Carrie Rossenfeld
Carrie Rossenfeld is a reporter for the San Diego and Orange County markets on GlobeSt.com and a contributor to Real Estate Forum. She was a trade-magazine and newsletter editor in New York City before moving to Southern California to become a freelance writer and editor for magazines, books and websites. Rossenfeld has written extensively on topics including commercial real estate, running a medical practice, intellectual-property licensing and giftware. She has edited books about profiting from real estate and has ghostwritten a book about starting a home-based business.
