Foreclosures spike in North Texas

But expert says it’s nothing like 2010 — yet

Foreclosure Listing Service's Curtis Roddy (LinkedIn, Getty Images)
Foreclosure Listing Service's Curtis Roddy (LinkedIn, Getty Images)

Here comes the foreclosure wave.

North Texas lenders have scheduled 795 homes for foreclosure auctions next month — a huge year-on-year jump from only 331 last September, the Dallas Morning News reported.

At the height of the market boom, homeowners facing foreclosure could usually sell their homes before it came to the point of an actual foreclosure auction. But as the housing market has cooled, distressed homes have lingered on the market, leading some motivated sellers to cut their asking prices, and still struggle to sell before their auction deadlines, said Curtis Roddy, chief operating officer of Foreclosure Listing Service, a McKinney-based real estate data firm.

“In the past, when the market was red hot and someone just filed for foreclosure, you could sell your house in a day,” Roddy said. “Now, with properties sitting on the market for 20 or 30 days before they get an offer, it’s not as easy to sell a property before it goes into foreclosure.

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So far in 2022, there’s been 4,740 homes filed for foreclosure in the major North Texas counties — almost triple the number for the same period in 2021. Of course, the major difference between this year and last year is the end of the pandemic-era federal moratorium on foreclosures.

According to Roddy, this sharp increase in foreclosures signals a simple return to pre-pandemic levels — not a foreclosure boom like the one following the subprime mortgage crisis of 2007.

In all of 2019, there were about 8,200 foreclosure filings in North Texas. But just by August 2010, there had already been 45,398 foreclosure filings since the start of that year.

“While there’s still a lot of equity in some of these houses, we’re just not seeing people being able to sell them before the auction as quickly,” Roddy says. “I don’t think we’re seeing anything like [the housing crisis].”

However, not all counties in North Texas are affected equally. Dallas County had the largest number of foreclosure filings so far in Augus,t at 285, up 41 percent from last month. Collin County foreclosure filings are up 72 percent from last month with 103, and have more than tripled since last year.

— Maddy Sperling