(Save the date: RealShare Apartments comes to the Westin Bonaventure, Los Angeles, October 24.)
IRVINE, CA-Foreclosure filings—including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions—decreased 7% in September, a reduction of 16% from September 2011, according to RealtyTrac’s US Foreclosure Market Report for September and the third quarter of 2012. September’s total was the lowest US total since July 2007.
“We’ve been waiting for the other foreclosure shoe to drop since late 2010, when questionable foreclosure practices slowed activity to a crawl in many areas, but that other shoe is instead being carefully lowered to the floor and therefore making little noise in the housing market—at least at a national level,” according to Daren Blomquist, VP at RealtyTrac. “Make no mistake, however: the other shoe is dropping quite loudly in certain states, primarily those where foreclosure activity was held back the most last year.”
Blomquist added that in several states where the foreclosure flow was not so dammed up last year, a roller-coaster pattern in foreclosure activity is anticipated going forward due to recent legislation or court rules that substantively change the rules to properly foreclose. “A backlog of delayed foreclosures will likely build up in those states as lenders adjust to the new rules, with many of those delayed foreclosures eventually hitting down the road.”
As GlobeSt.com reported in August, 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 had risen for the third straight month, according to RealtyTrac.
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| September’s decrease helped drop the third-quarter foreclosure numbers to the lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2007, down 5% from the second quarter and down 13% from the third quarter of 2011. |
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| Third-quarter foreclosure activity increased on a year-over-year basis in 14 out of the 26 states with a primarily judicial foreclosure process. Some notable exceptions of judicial-foreclosure states where foreclosure activity decreased on an annual basis in the third quarter include Massachusetts and Wisconsin. |
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| US foreclosed properties in the third quarter took an average of 382 days to complete the foreclosure process, up from 378 days in the previous quarter and up from 336 days in the third quarter of 2011. This was the highest average number of days to foreclose since the first quarter of 2007. |
*charts courtesy of RealtyTrac
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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.
