Click for interactive version of foreclosure heatmap (source: RealtyTrac)Foreclosure filings fell 5 percent month-over-month in April to the lowest level since July 2007, according to the U.S. Foreclosure Market Report released today by RealtyTrac. The 188,780 properties on which default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions were reported in April marks a 14 percent decline from April 2011. [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

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Nationwide foreclosures are on the way down, with only about 1.7 million properties receiving default notices, auction sale notices or bank repossessions in the first half of 2011, a 25 percent decrease from the previous six months and a 29 percent decrease from the first half of 2010, according to a mid-year foreclosure market report by RealtyTrac, released yesterday. However, the reduction is not necessarily a good sign for the market, RealtyTrac said. Rather, it is simply more evidence that processing delays are pushing foreclosures further and further back into 2012.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 222,740 U.S. properties in June, the report shows, an increase of almost 4 percent from the previous month, but a decrease of 29 percent from June 2010. June was the ninth straight month where foreclosure activity decreased on a year-over-year basis. — Katherine Clarke [more]

Click to enlarge (source: PropertyShark)

Newly scheduled residential foreclosure auctions in New York City hit another low in January, continuing the downward trajectory that began in the aftermath of the so-called “robo-signing” controversy late last year.

According to new data from PropertyShark.com, which tracks the number of foreclosure auctions scheduled for the first time there were just 106 such filings in January, down from 247 in October 2010, when the scandal surfaced and lenders began to impose temporary foreclosure freezes. The city’s peak was 473 newly scheduled foreclosure auctions in June 2009.

Each building class — including co-ops, condos, single-family homes and two-family homes — saw similarly dramatic declines in scheduled auctions of between 40 and 60 percent on a year-over-year basis.
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Nearly 5,000 New York City homes were hit with foreclosure filings in the first quarter of 2010, up 1.51 percent from the quarter before and 16.21 percent over the first quarter of 2009, according to national real estate foreclosure tracking company RealtyTrac, which released its monthly market report today (click here for the full report). Worst in the city in terms of its foreclosure rate was Staten Island, where 631 households, or one in 284, received notice of some stage of the foreclosure process — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — during the quarter. That rate won the borough a fourth-place ranking among counties in the state for the three-month period. By sheer numbers, foreclosure filings on Staten Island dropped 1.71 percent from the fourth quarter of 2009 and were up 26.2 percent over the same period last year. Queens, whose South Jamaica neighborhood was recently pegged as the worst in the nation for mortgage fraud by First American CoreLogic for the period between 2004 and 2009, was hit with 1,694 foreclosure filings during the first quarter, up 1.93 percent from the quarter before and down 3.09 percent from the same period last year. That works out to one in every 496 homes for a ninth-place ranking in the state. [more]

There were 1,750 bank-owned properties in New York City, as of September 2009, according to a report released today from the Furman Center. This represents a six-fold jump in the number of bank-owned properties over the last two years, and that statistic stands to increase even further given the city’s record 20,000 foreclosure filings in 2009. A handful of regions, including Eastern Queens, Central Brooklyn and Staten Island’s northern shore, appeared to be the hardest hit, showing a higher concentration of bank-owned properties than other parts of the five boroughs. The report noted that these neighborhoods had a higher level of mortgage distress than other parts of New York City, as well. TRD

The number of foreclosures filed in November hit 306,627, down 8 percent over the number filed in October, according to the most recent data from RealtyTrac. This was the fourth consecutive monthly decline, with the number of foreclosures filed declining 3 percent in October, 4 percent in September and 1 percent in August, month-over-month. James Saccacio, CEO of RealtyTrac, cited foreclosure prevention efforts and ramped up loan modification programs as key in the decreased number of filings. Even so, the number has yet to rebound from figures seen a year ago. November 2009’s filings were up 18 percent over the number seen during the same time period a year earlier.

Six percent fewer homeowners received foreclosure notices last month
than in April, according to statistics from RealtyTrac released
yesterday. The number of foreclosure notices fell 9.3 percent
year-over-year, to 1,885 notices. But if unemployment jumps again, it
could trigger an increase in foreclosures, said Daren Blomquist, a
RealtyTrac spokesperson. Of the boroughs, Queens saw the highest number
of foreclosure notices, with 713, but that foreclosure rate was still
down almost 13 percent from April and almost 16 percent year-over-year. [more]