Foreclosure Tidal Waves Engulfing The Country In January

February 28th, 2008 | Tags: Foreclosure

As compared to January 2007 this year the first month has seen foreclosures go up by 57% and bank repossessions up by 90%.

Although there has been a 3% month-over-month decrease in foreclosure activity in Florida 30,178 units had at least 1 foreclosure. This made it the second highest offender in the country. January 2008 saw a rise of 158% over January 2006.

Texas came third with 14,698 foreclosure filings – 20% increase over December 2007 but less than what it was in January 2007. The average monthly foreclosure rate was less than the national median making it 13^th among the states.

Ohio, Michigan and Georgia each listed 10,000 foreclosures. Others in the top 10 group were Arizona, Massachusetts, Illinois and Colorado. In the metro zones California and Florida continued to dominate – accounting for 8 of the top 10 listings in January 2008. The Cape Coral-Fort Myers metro area recorded the highest January foreclosure number among 229 metro areas scrutinized in the report of Realtytrac. Port St. Lucie-Fort Pierce ranked 10^th among the Florida metro areas. Stockton, California came second among the metro foreclosure listings. Other California metro areas included among the top 10 were Riverside-San Bernardino (third), Modesto (fourth) Merced (fifth), Vallejo-Fairfield (seventh) and Bakersfield (ninth). Amongst the cities Las Vegas was sixth, and Greeley, Colorado eighth.

RealtyTrac tracks the total number of properties filed during a month qualified by the type of filing at the state and national level. At the individual county level data is also available. All the stages of foreclosure are taken into account – default (NOD), Lis Pendens (LIS) and auction. The auction are of two kinds NTS or notice of trustee sale and NFS or notice of foreclosure sale. Sometimes and rarely more than one foreclosure is filed against a single property. In that eventuality the recent counting is taken into consideration in the figures.

Considering the all embracing choking grip of foreclosures strangling the society and economy everybody is groping to find a remedy. Activities are afoot at the community, local, state and federal level. Lenders are a worried lot weighed down with staggering number of foreclosures. Foreclosure is a time consuming costly process for the lenders who are facing a cash crunch. The dispossessed are a disgruntled lot causing headaches for vote seekers. With the real estate in the doldrums the tax and revenue collection are at an all time low.