Lenders have become more willing to keep defaulted homeowners in their own homes, the New York Times reported, marking a contrast from six years ago when the housing bubble burst and defaulted owners were often forced to leave their homes just months after defaulting.

Sometimes, lenders are willing to strike deals with homeowners, the paper said. For example, sometimes, if the owners pay for utilities while the lenders pay home insurance, then the owners can remain in their homes. Some lenders plainly put off foreclosure sale dates. [more]

Seasonal factors depressed new national foreclosure filings in November, according to a report released today by RealtyTrac, but storm clouds continue to gather for a forthcoming downpour of activity.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 224,394 U.S. properties, or one in every 579 homes, in November, 3 percent fewer than were filed in October and 14 percent fewer than the number filed in November 2010. However, that represents a step back from October, which had 31 percent fewer filings on a year-over-year basis.

“November’s numbers suggest a new set of incoming foreclosure waves,” RealtyTrac co-founder James Saccacio said in a statement, “many of which may roll into the market as REOs or short sales sometime early next year … Overall foreclosure activity is down 14 percent from a year ago, the smallest annual decrease over the past 12 months.”

New default notices were filed for 71,730 properties in November, an 8 percent decrease from the prior month, and a 9 percent fall from November a year ago.

Foreclosure auctions jumped 13 percent since October, but fell 17 percent from the previous year, and lenders repossessed 56,124 properties, a 17 percent decrease on both month-over-month and year-over-year bases.

Just one in every 1,587 New York State homes had foreclosure filings, the eighth lowest rate in the country. Compare that to Nevada, where one in every 175 properties were hit with foreclosures, the highest rate in the nation. California and Arizona rounded out the top three in terms of foreclosure rate, while North Dakota had the smallest rate.

New York foreclosures fell 3.2 percent from October and 42.9 percent from November 2010, the 16th largest year-over-year decline in the nation. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

Foreclosure filings jumped 7 percent nationwide in October from the previous month, but remain nearly 31 percent below last year’s level, according to a report released today by RealtyTrac.

The rise comes as lenders have worked for the last year to correct foreclosure processing problems.

“The October foreclosure numbers continue to show strong signs that foreclosure activity is coming out of the rain delay we’ve been in for the past year as lenders corrected foreclosure paperwork and processing problems,” said RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio.

New York had the third lowest foreclosure rate among the 50 states, as just one out of every 4,892 homes had foreclosures filed against them, compared to the national average of one in every 563 homes. October foreclosure filings fell 14.1 percent from September, and 57.1 percent from October 2010.

Elsewhere around the country (see interactive chart below), defaults hit 12-month highs in California, Florida and Michigan, while Vermont and North Dakota remained least affected by defaults. Though Nevada still has the top foreclosure rate in the country, at one in every 180 households, defaults hit a 64-month low in the state, thanks to a new law requiring lenders to record additional information in public records before filing for foreclosure.

Though that law helped Nevada in the short-term, RealtyTrac noted that the constant changing of foreclosure laws is prolonging the country’s foreclosure crisis.

“Recent state court rulings and new state laws keep changing the rules of the foreclosure game on the fly, creating more uncertainty in the housing market and threatening to prolong the road to a robust real estate recovery,” Saccacio said. – Adam Fusfeld

[more]

While many parts of the nation are seeing a decrease in the number of mortgage defaults and other home loan-related distress, southeastern Queens is continuing to see its rate of foreclosures rise, according to Crain’s. The region, which has long ranked as one of the worst in the nation in foreclosures, is continuing to see the number of homeowners in distress climb. Foreclosure rates in some of southeastern Queens’ most badly hit areas climbed as much as 80 percent month-over-month in August, according to RealtyTrac data. [more]

New York City saw 1,541 foreclosure filings in May, marking an 18.25 percent plummet from May 2009, according to national foreclosure resea [more]

Click graph for larger version (source: Calculated Risk)

The rate of serious delinquencies on single-family homes, those that are 90 days or more behind, increased more than 2 percent between December 2008 and December 2009, up to 3.87 percent from 1.72 percent, according to the latest data from Freddie Mac. This figure may not, however, be as dramatic as it seems, according to Calculated Risk. Some of the loans counted in the report may be in trial modification programs and won’t be considered out of delinquency until they enter the permanent modification stage. [more]

The principal on interest-only mortgages — which let the borrower put off principal payments for years — is coming due now. That means the monthly payments for interest-only mortgage borrowers could jump 20 percent or more, which could mean a wave of defaults in this economy. Steven Kandarian, MetLife’s chief investment officer, told Bloomberg he thinks the worst is yet to come and that the defaults will occur over the next two or three years. [more]