So far in 2013, Dallas-Fort Worth (D-FW) area home foreclosure filings have dropped by almost 40% from where they were in the first six months of 2012.  And the number of homes threatened for forced sale by lenders next month is 43% below year-ago levels.  If the foreclosure activity continues to drop at current levels, 2013 could see the lowest number of home foreclosure filings in the 4-county area in almost a decade.  “It’s still not down to historic norms but it is moving in that direction,” said Dr. James Gaines, economist with the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M [...]

The shape of homeownership and housing markets has changed dramatically over time and will continue to change in the face of new housing opportunities and challenges. That’s according to panelists at the “Challenges and Opportunities in Housing and Homeownership” session today during the Realtors 2013 Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo here.  During the session, academics from DePaul University, George Mason University, University of North Carolina and the University of Maryland presented various research and data illustrating the impact of shifting demographics, new mobility patterns and an uncertain interest rate environment on future housing prices, availability and affordability. Funding for [...]

The San Francisco Chronicle notes that it is difficult to keep track of foreclosure rates now … let alone during the Great Depression:  “Foreclosure rates of the late 2000s are often compared with those of the Great Depression, which took place through the first half of the 1930s. However, there were no public or private agencies keeping track of foreclosure rates at that time. Indeed, the government still does not keep an official statistic on the number of homes in foreclosure or repossessed by banks and lenders.”  But the Chronicle provides estimates of foreclosures during the 1930s:  “A 2008 article by David [...]

Sen. Bill Nelson wants regulators to fix a “disturbing” credit-reporting quirk that is torching the credit of people who sold their homes in short sales.  Speaking before a US Senate subcommittee, Nelson called short sales and foreclosures “a completely different breed of horse.” Lumping the two together, he said, punished short sellers who had sought a bank-approved method to leave mortgages they no longer wanted or were unable to pay. “You’re supposed to be protecting the consumer,” Nelson said. “I would appreciate it if you all would stop this nonsense and get it coded correctly so that our people are [...]

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have implemented policies to expedite the short sales process, including new resources to help determine property values, according to panelists at a property valuation forum during the Realtors Midyear Legislative Meetings & Trade Expo here.  Short sales continue to represent a significant portion of the real estate market. According to the National Association of Realtors, short sales accounted for 9% of transactions during the first quarter of 2013.  The short sale process can be frustrating for home buyers, sellers and Realtors given that approvals are often complex, inconsistent, slow and cumbersome. Tim McCallum, director [...]

An industry-wide focus on the rising popularity of short sales may give the impression that properties are being liquidated at a faster pace.  However, Morningstar‘s Distressed Inventory Index shows a different story – the total rate of liquidation has actually decreased in recent months.  The credit ratings firm found that over a course of a year, overall distressed inventory decreased by 19% while the number of liquidations dropped by 14%.  “We estimate that it will take 40 months to clear the national distressed inventory. This is down three months from one year ago,” said Brian Grow and Becky Cao of Morningstar.   [...]

With Inland Empire foreclosures at pre-recession lows, Riverside County’s foreclosure rate dropped to No. 21 statewide in April.  A total 1,403 mortgage default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions were recorded in April, meaning 1 in 566 households was in some stage of foreclosure, according to Irvine-based RealtyTrac. Of those, 45 were from Palm Desert, according to data provided by the organization to Palm Desert Patch.  In Palm Desert: -  One out of every 538 households received a foreclosure filing in April -  That number was down by about 25% from March 2013, and down 55% from last April. -  [...]

With tens of thousands of foreclosure cases clogged in the state’s courts, the Florida Supreme Court is signing off on a plan to use lawyers — and not judges — to handle them.  The court on Thursday issued an order that will allow chief judges across the state to use “general magistrates” to process foreclosure cases.  The order, which was approved by all seven justices, called the move a “vehicle to provide additional judicial resources to efficiently process those cases.”  Florida — which has had one of the nation’s highest foreclosure rates since the start of the Great Recession — [...]

RealtyTrac today released its US Foreclosure Market Report™ for April 2013, which shows foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 144,790 US properties in April, a decrease of 5% from the previous month and down 23% from April 2012. Total foreclosure activity in April was at the lowest level since February 2007, a 74-month low.  The report also shows one in every 905 US housing units with a foreclosure filing during the month.  “The April numbers indicate that the pig is moving through the python when it comes to deferred foreclosures in judicial foreclosure states,” [...]

While some states still saw increases in homes taken back by banks, nationally home repossessions fell 3% in March from the previous month and were down 21% from a year earlier, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. said.  Thirty-four states posted annual declines in completed foreclosures. Among those bucking that trend: Arkansas, Maryland, Washington and Pennsylvania.  All told, lenders repossessed 43,597 homes last month, the lowest level since September 2007.  At the current monthly pace, completed foreclosures will total roughly 550,000 this year, down from 671,000 last year, RealtyTrac said.  An uptick in homes that entered the foreclosure process last month, [...]

Lenders offer cash payments once a borrower wants to pursue a short sale, said former Air Force officer George Chung, senior vice president of Wells Fargo Home Lending.  The incentive offered by Wells Fargo is generally about $3,000, Chung said. That’s over and above the bank’s agreement to allow the house to be sold for less than the outstanding mortgage balance. This allows the borrower to walk away from the loan.  Under guidelines issued by the Federal Housing Finance Agency in November, homeowners with a mortgage owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac can sell their home in a short [...]

The March Mortgage Monitor report released by Lender Processing Services (NYSE: LPS) found that new problem loan rates (seriously delinquent mortgages that were current six months ago) have fallen below 1% for the first time since 2007. At 0.84%, the March new problem loan rate is approaching pre-crisis levels, and nearing the conditions of 2000-2004 when the rate averaged 0.55%. However, as LPS Applied Analytics Senior Vice President Herb Blecher explained, a borrower’s equity position is still a key indicator of his or her propensity to default.  The March data also showed that on the national level, foreclosure starts were [...]

Fewer homes and businesses were the subject of new foreclosure filings in 2012, according to data released Thursday by the Supreme Court of Ohio.  The final count on new foreclosure cases in Ohio courts this past year was 70,469, or about 1.5% less than 2011. The all-time high was reached in 2009, when 89,061 foreclosure proceedings were opened.  Although the 2012 numbers show the downward trend is continuing, foreclosures still are elevated compared to recent history. Ten years earlier, there were 55,274 filings. In 1992, there were fewer than 20,000.  Tom Williams, president of the Ohio Association of Realtors, said [...]

There were 274 foreclosure deeds recorded in the state in March, down 24.3% from the 362 recorded in March 2012, the New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority announced yesterday.  The state saw 806 foreclosures in the first quarter of 2013, the agency said, 16.3% fewer than the 963 recorded in the first quarter of 2013 and the lowest first-quarter level since 2008.  New Hampshire foreclosures in 2012 were at their lowest annual level since 2009.  Other indicators also show growing strength in the residential real estate market. March was the 16th consecutive month that home sales in New Hampshire rose from [...]

The state’s foreclosure inventory — those in some stage of foreclosure — extended to 9.7% of all mortgaged homes in March, more than three times the national average.  Florida also reported the highest number of completed foreclosures over the past year, with 102,847, according to the CoreLogic report we reported on yesterday.  The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater region posted the highest foreclosure inventory, at 10.2%, among the nation’s 25 largest metro areas.  Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford was second, at 9.7%.  Nationwide, 2.8% of all mortgaged homes are in foreclosure.  Nearly 735,000 foreclosures were completed in the past year, with 14% of them in Florida.  Still, [...]