Foreclosures High Jumps in Third Quarter

Posted on October 29, 2008
Filed Under Foreclosure Homes |

Despite palliative measures foreclosures high jumped by 78% in the third quarter in comparison to the same quarter of 2007.
According to the foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc, the number of filings rose by 61% from the same month a year ago.
For Maricopa County, repo homes numbers grew by 66 percent from September 2007.

Pima County faced a 12% rise in foreclosures in September 2008 from September 2007. On an average, there was one filing for every 429 households. However, this depreciated by 10% from August. This is due to the new state laws, which delay the foreclosure process. Figures for the third quarter were not available.

RealtyTrac said that throughout the nation, 766,000 households were sent a foreclosure-related notice from July through September. This was 71% higher than a year earlier.
RealtyTrac anticipates that by the end of the year, there will be a million properties owned by the bank, which will pile up on the market. This makes up for one-third of all properties for sale in the entire country.

Anyone who wants to sell his or her home is going to face a difficulty. Due to foreclosure, most of the properties are offering huge discounts. This brings down the housing value of the entire neighbourhood. Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s vice president for marketing says, “It has a pretty significant impact in terms of pricing.”
RealtyTrac handles all default notices, auction sale notices, bank repossessions and any other matter related to the foreclosure crisis. It reports that in the third quarter, lenders nationwide repossessed more than 250,000 properties. This includes 81,000 in the previous month.

California is responsible for more than a quarter of all the U.S. foreclosure filings. Arizona, California, Florida, Ohio, Michigan and Nevada make up for more than 60% of all the foreclosure filings in the quarter.

The only cities outside Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada, which were a part of RealtyTrac’s list of the 20 most affected metropolitan areas, were Detroit and Atlanta.

Millions of homeowners are hardly left with an option considering the deadly combination of sinking home values, tighter mortgage lending criteria along with an economy, which is believed to be in recession. Buyers are extremely hard to find. According to MDA DataQuick, the statewide median home price depreciated by 34% to $283,000 and home sales jumped from 65% from the previous year.