Foreclosure Filings Double Over Last Year!

November 5th, 2007

A mortgage data company said on Thursday, that U.S. homeowners struggled in large numbers to meet their monthly mortgage payments this quarter, causing various properties at some stage of foreclosure or the other to double from last year.

According to Irvine-based RealtyTrac Inc. a sum of 446,726 households countrywide were involved in some sort of foreclosure activity from the period of July to September this year. This was an increase of 100.1% from the 223,233 properties in the same time last year.

Even over the last quarter this year, the current figure was higher by 33.9% over the 333,731 foreclosed properties in this year’s second quarter.

This made it one foreclosure filing for every 196 homes in the country for this quarter, according to RealtyTrac.

According to the report, only five states did not show an annual increase in foreclosure filings, including default notices, auction sale notices as well as bank repossessions.

Sometimes, one property may receive more than one notice in a quarter. Keeping all this in mind, 635,159 foreclosure filings took place this quarter, which was higher by 99.5% from a year-ago, and more by 30% from this year’s second quarter.

CEO of RealtyTrac, James J. Saccacio, issued a statement saying that August and September reported the highest monthly totals since January 2005, when the company started reporting foreclosure filings.

“Given the number of loans due to reset through the middle of 2008, and the continuing weakness in home sales, we would expect foreclosure activity to remain high and even increase over the next year in many markets,” he said.

Predatory loans started off as attractive options for homebuyers due to their cheap “teaser” interest rates, which kept monthly payments affordable, though just a small percentage increase in interest rates could translate into much higher payments, which is what happened.

With sales of homes on the decline, and property prices moving down or staying flat across many parts of the country, a lot of house owners are facing foreclosure as they can no longer afford to sell the houses they bought, despite the fact that they are unable to meet their mortgage payments.

RealtyTrac said that Nevada, California and Florida made up the three states with the highest foreclosure rates during the third quarter.

Nevada had a foreclosure filing for every 61 households, and16,817 filings for 12,982 properties.

California stood at the top when it came to net foreclosure filings, reporting a filing for every 88 homes.

Florida’s foreclosures stood at a filing for every 95 homes.