9:50am | Foreclosures rose slightly in October, according to RealtyTrac’s U.S. Foreclosure Market Report. The report shows foreclosure filings were reported on 230,678 U.S. properties in October, a 7 percent increase from the previous month. But foreclosures were still down nearly 31 percent from October 2010.
According to the report one in every 563 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing during the month.
“The October foreclosure numbers continue to show strong signs that foreclosure activity is coming out of the rain delay we’ve been in for the past year as lenders corrected foreclosure paperwork and processing problems,” James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, said in a statement. “However, recent state court rulings and new state laws keep changing the rules of the foreclosure game on the fly, creating more uncertainty in the housing market and threatening to prolong the road to a robust real estate recovery.”
Long Beach and other affordable communities have been more foreclosure prone, and until the backlog of foreclosed, or about to be foreclosed on, homes gets cleared, it will be difficult for the local markets to begin a recovery, area real estate agents say.
“It’s a lot of what many of us have been saying all along,” said Jeremy Colonna, a broker with Colonna & Co. Realty in Belmont Shore. “Having the state and federal governments change the rules over and over again does nothing more than prolong the inevitable. Homeowners who are not paying their mortgages eventually get foreclosed upon.”
Despite a 34 percent drop in foreclosure activity, Nevada posted the nation’s highest foreclosure rate for the 58th straight month in October with one in every 180 Nevada housing receiving a foreclosure filing during the month. California default notices rose 17 percent from the previous month to a 13-month high, helping the state post the nation’s second highest foreclosure rate with one in every 243 housing units getting a foreclosure filing in October.
The top states in terms of foreclosure rates in October following Nevada and California were Arizona, Florida and Michigan. The five states accounted for 53 percent of the national total for the month.