Foreclosures Rise in April by 32%
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Foreclosures are on the rise again. After a brief reprieve at the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009, foreclosures are rising again. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that many mortgage lenders and states put a moratorium on foreclosures over the holiday season and at the beginning of the year. However, most of the moratoriums were only 90 days in length, and that accounts for the uptick in foreclosure activity for March and for April. StockMarketFunding reports on the rising numbers of foreclosures:
The April number, however, was less than one percent above that posted in March, when more than 340,000 properties were affected. The March data was up 17 percent from February and 46 percent from a year earlier. “We’ve never seen two consecutive months like this,” said Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s senior vice president for marketing.
“It’s the volume that’s surprising.” While total foreclosure activity was up, the number of repossessions by banks was down on a monthly and annual basis to their lowest level since March of last year, RealtyTrac said. But that’s far from positive news. Because much of the foreclosure activity in April was in the default and auction stages — the first parts of the foreclosure process — it’s likely that repossessions will increase in coming months, RealtyTrac said.
With the beginning stages of foreclosure picking up, it is likely that bank repos will be increasing in the coming months. It is possible to stop a foreclosure once it starts, but it can be difficult. So it is unlikely that there will be much relief for foreclosures in the coming months.
For bargain hunters, however, this news is not all bad. It means that there is likely to be more inexpensive homes on the market, with foreclosures and near-foreclosures leading to more motivated sellers. For the economy, though, it could mean that the bottom has not quite arrived.
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