Foreclosures are by far one of the biggest threats to the U.S. housing market, which remains highly vulnerable to setbacks and heavily reliant on government intervention. If foreclosures keep dropping, it will be one of the strongest signals yet the market is on the path to recovery. Foreclosure filings -- including mortgage default notices, house auctions and home repossessions by banks -- were reported on 308,524 properties in February, down 2 percent from January, but still up 6 percent from the year-ago month, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said. "The 6 percent year-over-year increase we saw in February was the smallest annual increase we've seen since January 2006, when we began calculating year-over-year increases, but it still marked the 50th consecutive month of year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity," said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, in a statement. (From Reuters) Yes US foreclosures have dropped a little bit, but what they are not telling you, that there is a big increase in foreclosures in the high end market (Million dollar homes). So the math is really simple: $1 million divided by $200K = 5 average houses I guess the conclusion is that the foreclosures did drop but now we are losing more money. (So maybe this is good news for Gennie Mae and Fannie Mae, since they donât provide Jumbo loans) We are talking about the housing markets in California, Nevada, Florida and Arizona.
The "housing situation" and commercial RE has been jawboned and "papered over"... to seem "all not that bad".... we'll see
"Foreclosures" is one more term which is subject to recent manipulations in order to convince 'investors' to spend more money... Look at this document - http://www.huduser.org/portal/periodicals/ushmc/winter09/hist_data.pdf - scroll it down to 'Table 19' , then look at the 2nd and 3rd graphs under 'table 19' title.. Look at the waive of delinquencies around 2001 - a tiny change in delinquencies (couple of %) caused almost same spike in foreclosures. If you look at recent data, you 'unexpectedly'(what a joke that 'unexpectedly' word) see foreclosures going down even delinquencies continue to surge - even among 'prime' loans. But - 'unexpectedly' - foreclosures are going down!! What does that mean? Problem is over? Or, may be it's getting even worse, but 'decrease' in foreclosures is just under carpet right now? Take into consideration restriction on foreclosures under loan modification program, don't forget 'toxic asset' Fed bought from banks(and Fed guys are not in rush to make evictions for their 'toxic assets'), don't forget that banks now considering is it really better to get more empty houses on their balance sheets instead of keeping 'toxic loans' with hope to sell it to Fed ... So, don't look for 'foreclosures', look for 'delinquences', until some 'creative' way not found to make these numbers look better too .