East Bay Area Foreclosure data

There are sings for improvement across the board, but these are quite week at the moment. Last month, the number of homeowners who received notice of default dropped in the Bay Area in Contra Costa County, according to a report posted by RealtyTrac. In addition Contra Costa County and Alameda County registered a decline in bank repossessions, the last step of foreclosure process.

"We are seeing a bit of seesaw or roller coaster ride here with the numbers, and I think it’s because of all the outside intervention that’s impacting the foreclosure process" said Daren Blomquist, marketing and communications manager for RealtyTrac. "Even though there are a lot of good signs, it’s really too early to say we are totally out of the woods in the foreclosure crisis."

The signals for foreclosure crisis end continue to be confusing. There are lots of positive signs, but we have to include the loan modifications programs, unemployment and the way banks manage their foreclosure backlogs.

For example Alameda County registered a 143.6% increase in notice of defaults, In June. This comes as a result of the high unemployment, which is impacting lots of people. However, if we take a look at the year over year numbers, there is a slight improvement: some 896 homeowners in Contra Costa County received a notice of default in July, which means 53.8% drop from a year ago and a 15.9% decline from June. July brought another 636 homes to the banks, which represents a 17% drop from 2009, but a 10.4% gain from June.

In the Bay Area 3,149 homeowners receive a notice of default, meaning a 35.1% down from a year ago but 26.3% up from June. Bank became owners of a number of 1,467 foreclosed properties, which is down 11.5% from a year ago but up 18.8% from June.

Foreclosure drops come as a result of short sales, when a home is sold for less than the loan amount, and banks decide not to proceed with the foreclosure proceedings.

"I think certain markets have stabilized. In some cases were even have price increases, and we are going to see less homeowners underwater," Mayfield said. "Unemployment is the big unknown. Regardless of unemployment, I think that we can see some improvement in home values and continuation of low interest rates, so the the housing market continues to recover," he added.

Posted by Istvan Fekete on Aug 25 2010. Filed under Foreclosures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry