Real Estate Foreclosures Surge In Lexington Area

November 26th, 2007

You are well aware about the simmering, real estate turmoil that has badly affected the mortgage market. In fact, families are literally collapsing under the cumbersome weight of real estate defaults, thus sending foreclosure figures in the real estate segment, soaring to an all time high.

In September 2007, you would be amazed to know that the six-county Lexington metro area witnessed a surge of 212 new foreclosures! All of these except for eight new cases came from the region of Fayette County. This was revealed by the California-based firm, RealtyTrac that collects all valuable foreclosure data on a nationwide basis. It also ranked Scott County at the second position.

The third-quarter total for this year showed equal to one foreclosure for each and every 919 households that were located in the areas across Clark, Scott, Bourbon, Fayette, Jessamine, and Woodford counties, as per the RealtyTrac records.

This fact shows that the national wave of foreclosure is now dangerously close to swamping everything. The figure is double that of the foreclosures that totaled 106 during the third quarter for the year of 2006. This would also mean that it was almost 12 times the foreclosures comprising 18 filings that were filed during 2005, for the same period.

The new data from RealtyTrac was provided just recently when the quarterly rankings on foreclosure rates were announced pertaining to the country’s 100 largest metro areas.

According to its report, the Lexington area comprises so few residents that it can hardly even figure in the top slot. However, its foreclosure figures are much below the overall average at a national level where there is one filing for foreclosure for every 198 homes during the third quarter of the year.

Just to refresh your mind on how this began: a foreclosure process is triggered off when the homebuyer fails to make the mortgage payments on time. This failure allows the lender to go to court and get the homeowner’s property, namely the home itself, to be sold or auctioned publicly to recover the price that is required in order to repay the loan that is pending.

In some cases, a delinquent homebuyer manages to get a refinance on the loan or make the required payments just before the sale. In such situations, the foreclosure process inevitably gets stopped.

In RealtyTrack’s quarterly report, three states were indicted as the prime culprits as they accounted for more than two thirds of the newest foreclosure figures in the country’s top metro areas. These culprits where filings became actual hotspots are Ohio, California, and Florida.