Foreclosures Shoot Up By 121 Percent In Lexington

February 25th, 2008

Lexington metro area comprising six counties recorded a steep increase in foreclosure rate in 2007 but still small compared to larger metro areas.

The California based foreclosure tracking company; RealtyTrac stated that 464 properties in the area were in the purview of foreclosure as compared to 210 such cases in 2006. This increase is 121 percent.

2007 saw a fourth of 1 percent of all houses in Lexington under the foreclosure wrath. RealtyTrac reported that the national average was 1.03 percent while the average for the top 100 metro areas was 1.4 percent.

Lexington area seems too small to be among the top hundred, but if one went by the RealtyTrac data and assumed that Lexington was big enough, it would be ranked 95^th. The ranking is based on the calculation of the ratio of the number of foreclosure filings as against the total number of households in the area.

If one went by a similar report released in August of 2007, the areas of Bourbon, Clark, Fayette, Jessamine, Scott and Woodford counties of Lexington, the metro area would be ranked 89^th.

James J. Saccacio claimed that out of the 100 metros, 86 of them reported the increase in foreclosure rates in 2007. He also said that the most affected areas were those of Stockton in California and Las Vegas due to rapid growth and uncontained price appreciation or were cities undergoing a repeated downturn in economy coupled with higher rates of unemployment like Detroit. Detroit topped the raking list with 41,273 properties amounting to 4.92 percent of its households under the eye of foreclosure in 2007.

Of the top 20 metro areas, reporting high foreclosures 15 of them were among the counties of California, Ohio, Florida and Michigan.

Other close “contenders” were the nearby metros of Dayton, Ohio, ranked 15^th with 2.07 percent of households under foreclosure; Indianapolis, ranked 18^th with 2.01 percent; Columbus, ranked 25^th with 1.8 percent; Cincinnati, ranked 33^rd with 1.5 percent; Nashville ranked 59^th with 0.9 percent and Knoxville ranked 72^nd with 0.6 percent.

RealtyTrac said that more than 2 million foreclosures for 1.3 million properties were initiated nationwide in 2007, which is a 79 percent increase from 2006.

Homeowners face foreclosure when they are unable to pay their monthly payments for mortgage and the lender is bound to go to court to put the property for sale to recover his investment or payoff the mortgage. To avoid foreclosures, some homebuyers make delayed payments by either selling the house or seek refinancing of the mortgage.