Foreclosure Figures Confuse

March 14th, 2008 | Tags: Foreclosure

Foreclosure listings inclusive of default and auction sale notices as well as repossessions by the bank rose to 223,651 in February 2008. It was an decrease of 4% from last month but a 60% rise from February of the previous year. Across the country out of every 557 house one has slipped into foreclosure. The 4% decrease between January and February is the same as it was in 2007. James Saccacio of RealtyTrac commented that this decrease is the same to the 6% decrease last year. What is significant is the 60% increase this February. In 2007 the figure was 19%. Thus the foreclosure activity seems to continue apace without signs of tiring or slowing down.

The second highest foreclosure activity has been noticed from the Stockton metropolitan area in California where one out of 87 houses are in foreclosures. Other offending metro areas are Modesto, Merced, Riverside-San Bernardino, Bakersfield, Vallejo-Fairfield and Sacramento. Cape Coral-Fort Myers metro tops the February metro lists in foreclosures with one out of 84 houses being affected – 6.7times higher than the national median.

In California 53,629 house were foreclosed in February – the highest among the states and a 6% increase from the previous month. It was up by 131% in comparison to February of the previous year. In California one out of 242 houses was in foreclosure last month.

Nevada continued to lead with one out of 165 in foreclosure – three times more than the average of the country. Florida ranked third with one out of 254 houses in foreclosure. Together California and Florida were responsible for nine out of ten top foreclosure numbers. Fort Lauderdale was high among the Florida metro offenders. Las Vegas was the lone instance of belonging to the top ten metro offenders that belonged to neither California nor Florida. Here the ratio was one out of 131 houses going into foreclosure. It ranked 6^th among the cities.

The figures released by ReatlyTrac includes all the three stages of foreclosure – NOD or notice of default, LIS or Lis Pendis, Auction or notice of trustee sale - NTS and notice of foreclosure sale or NFS as well as REO or real estate owned properties that have been foreclosed and then reclaimed by the bank. In some rare instances more than one foreclosure is documented on one property. In such a case only the latest filing is taken into account.