Foreclosure - Recent Trends

Recent Trends

In 2009 the United States Congress tried to rescue the economy with a $700 billion bailout for the financial industry, however there was a growing consensus that the deepening collapse of the housing market was at the heart of the country’s acute economic downturn. After spending billions of dollars rescuing financial institutions only to see the economy spiral even deeper into crisis, both liberal and conservative economists and lawmakers pushed to redirect an economic stimulus bill to what they saw as the core problem: the housing market. But beneath the consensus over helping the housing market, there were huge differences over who should benefit under the competing plans. Democrats wanted to aim money directly at people in the greatest distress; and Republicans wanted to aim money at almost all homebuyers, on the theory that a rising tide would eventually lift all boats.

In 2010 there was a 14% increase in the number of homes receiving a default notice between July and September. In that year one in every 45 homes received a foreclosure filing and the problem has become more widespread with the increasing rates of unemployment across the nation. Banks have become extremely aggressive without much patience for those who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments, and there are more families entering the foreclosure process sooner than ever. This year, 2011, banks are on track to repossess over 800,000 homes. In 2010, the highest rates of foreclosure filings were in Las Vegas, Nevada; Fort Myers, Florida; Modesto, California; Scottsdale, Arizona; Miami, Florida; and Ontario, California. The geographic diversity of these cities is made up for by the fact they these are all relatively metropolitan areas. Big cities like Houston, Texas saw a 26% increase in 2010, 23% in Seattle, Washington and 21% in Atlanta, Georgia. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the cities with the lowest rates of foreclosure were Rome, NY; South Burlington, VT; Charleston, WV; Bryan, TX; and Tuscaloosa, AL. Not surprisingly, these areas had some of the lowest nationwide rates of unemployment, helping to further demonstrate this correlation. A quote from RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio summarizes the recent trends:

“Foreclosure floodwaters receded somewhat in 2010 in the nation’s hardest-hit housing markets. Even so, foreclosure levels remained five to 10 times higher than historic norms in most of those hard-hit markets, where deep fault-lines of risk remain and could potentially trigger more waves of foreclosure activity in 2011 and beyond.”