NYC shows foreclosure spike

New York City showed a 13 percent increase in foreclosures in August, compared to the previous month, according to a monthly report from PropertyShark.com.

New York was the only of four markets surveyed in the report — including Los Angeles, Miami and Seattle — which showed an increase over this period.

The change was brought on by a drastic increase in foreclosures in Queens, which outweighed improvements in the other four boroughs. Foreclosures in Queens increased 43 percent from July, to 254 homes, out of the city’s 383 foreclosures.

Meanwhile, Brooklyn showed a 29 percent decrease in foreclosures. Manhattan was down 21 percent, Bronx was down 17 percent and Staten Island was down 9 percent.

Of the 15 New York City zip codes with the highest number of foreclosures in August, 14 of them were in Queens. The zip code with the most was 11433 — an area including parts of Jamaica, South Jamaica, Hollis and St. Albans — which had 19 new foreclosures last month.

Only 27 percent of foreclosure auctions in Queens between July 2007 and July 2008 were successful, the report said. Among the homes which could not be auctioned, 75 percent are still owned by the lenders.

The average value of a home foreclosed on in New York in August was $485,000.

Last month marked an all-time high total number of foreclosures for New York City since PropertyShark began tracking the statistic in spring 2005. However, compared to the rest of the country, the city’s rate remains relatively low, with only about one in 10,000 homes in foreclosure. That is one-twelfth the rate of foreclosures in Los Angeles.

The rate in Queens, however, is one in 3,333 homes. Staten Island’s rate is one in 3,030 homes.

New York had 53 percent more foreclosures in August than the year prior, when there were 250 foreclosed homes.