Foreclosure activity hit the lowest point in September since July 2007 according to Realtytrac’s Foreclosure Activity Report. There were 180,427 foreclosure filings (notices of default, auction notices, and bank repossessions) on U.S. properties in September, a decrease of 7% from August, and a drop of 16% on the year.
The decrease in September contributed to a third quarter decline in foreclosure filings to the lowest level for a quarter since the fourth quarter of 2007. There were 531,576 filings on U.S. homes during Q3 2012. The decrease from the previous quarter was 15% and from the third quarter of 2011 the drop was -11%. This was the ninth consecutive quarter with a decline in foreclosure activity. Still, one in every 248 homeowners nationwide received some kind of foreclosure notice.
The news was particularly positive in non-judicial states where foreclosure filings continue to be on the decline, most notably, in Arizona, California, Georgia, Michigan and Texas. The news is not uniformly positive in that certain judicial foreclosure states the number of filings continues to increase including in Florida, Illinois, Ohio, New Jersey and New York. South Florida itself saw 13,200 foreclosure actions – a 36% increase over the previous year. Third quarter foreclosure activity increased on an annual basis in 14 out of the 26 states that primarily use a judicial foreclosure process. Furthermore, the days to complete a foreclosure continued to increase in judicial states. The average length in all states is 382 days, up from 378 days in the 2nd quarter and 336 days in the third quarter of 2011.
New York documented the longest number of days to complete a foreclosure at 1,072 days while New Jersey registered an average time to close out a foreclosure at 931 days. Florida is third highest at 858 days, and Illinois registered the fourth highest time at 673 days.
The robo-signing scandal caused a slowdown in 2011-2012 due to the administrative irregularities the banks were having. They are starting to speed up the process again, with a slowdown in foreclosures predicted for 2014 at the earliest.