U.S. Foreclosures Rise In Third Quarter
The foreclosure crisis marches on. From the Washington Post’s Renae Merle today:
The number of homeowners pulled into the foreclosure crisis increased by 5 percent during the third quarter as a government program to help borrowers stay in their homes struggled to gain traction, according to RealtyTrac data released Thursday.
RealtyTrac found that more than 925,000 borrowers received a foreclosure filing, which can range from a default notice to a bank repossession, between July and September. That is up 23 percent from the comparable period last year.
The increase reflects an acceleration in the foreclosure crisis as more homeowners fall behind on payments and reflects the fact that banks are still working their way through a backlog of delinquent borrowers, according to RealtyTrac, which compiles data on more than 90 percent of U.S. households.
Many banks delayed foreclosures earlier this year to put in place a federal foreclosure prevention program. But by the third quarter, bank repossessions had resumed their climb, according to the RealtyTrac data. The number of homes taken back by lenders increased 21 percent during the third quarter to about 238,000, according to RealtyTrac.
“Some of those were homes that were maybe in limbo that were finally foreclosed on in the third quarter,” said Daren Blomquist, RealtyTrac’s spokesman.
Source:
“Foreclosures Continued to Rise in 3rd Quarter as Banks Worked on Backlog”
Renae Merle
Washington Post, October 16, 2009
Leave a Reply