Foreclosure Filings Drop in Second Half of 2011

ReatlyTrac, a leading online market place for foreclosure properties, released their Midyear 2011 Metropolitan Foreclosure Market Report, comparing the first half of 2011 to first half of 2010.  Data was collected from over 2,200 counties in the United States, which represented 90% of the population.  The report was based on the number of properties that had foreclosure filings entered into RealtyTrac’s database during the first six months of 2011.

Findings

According to this report, total foreclosure filings for this period were 1,170,402, which is a decrease of 29% from the first half of 2010. Foreclosure activity decreased in 178 of the 211 United States metropolitan areas with populations over 200,000 or in 84% of the areas.  The top twenty metropolitan areas had a decrease from the same period in 2010.  The state of California had seven metropolitan areas in the top ten and ten in the top twenty.

Foreclosure activity slowed especially in the metropolitan areas that were saturated with foreclosures and where judicial foreclosure processes were used.  The twenty metropolitan areas with the largest decrease in foreclosures were in states with judicial foreclosures processes, which included New York, Maryland, Florida, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Illinois. The average foreclosure took longer in the second quarter 2011, which was 318 days compared to 277 a year ago and 298 in first quarter 2011.

Key Reasons

The key reasons for the decrease in foreclosure activity:

Foreclosure process is taking longer

Unemployment rates are rising

Consumer confidence is week

Home sales and prices have gotten weaker

Top Ten Metropolitan Areas

The top ten metropolitan areas are listed by the number of foreclosures along with the decrease from the first half of 2010:

1. Las Vegas-Paradise, NV -17.9%
2. Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale, AZ -16.9%
3. Modesto, CA -27.5%
4. Stockton, CA -25.8%
5. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, CA -26.3%
6. Vallejo-Fairfield, CA – 20.9%
7. Reno-Sparks, NV -20.4%
8. Bakersfield, CA -23.8%
9. Merced, CA -37.6%
10. Sacramento – 20.4%

Top Ten States

The top ten states with percentage of foreclosures in percentage of housing units in the second half of 2011:

1. Nevada   4.76%
2. Arizona  2.82%
3. California  1.96 %
4. Utah  1.65%
5. Georgia  1.5%
6. Idaho  1.49%
7. Michigan– 1.34%
8. Florida  1.28%
9. Colorado 1.19%
10. Illinois 1.15%

John Ulzheimer is the President of Consumer Education at SmartCredit.com, the credit blogger for Mint.com, and a Contributor for the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.  He is an expert on credit reporting, credit scoring and identity theft. Formerly of FICO, Equifax and Credit.com, John is the only recognized credit expert who actually comes from the credit industry.  Follow him on Twitter here.

Categorised in: Debt, Money & Identity

This post was written by John Ulzheimer