From Bloomberg:
U.S. Mortgage Foreclosure Filings Rise 90% in May
U.S. foreclosure filings surged 90 percent in May from a year earlier as more homeowners fell behind on their monthly mortgage payments, RealtyTrac Inc. said.
There were 176,137 notices of default, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions last month, led by California, Florida and Ohio, the Irvine, California-based seller of foreclosure data said in a report today. The median price for a U.S. home slid 1.8 percent the first three months of 2007 as the housing slump entered its second year, according to the National Association of Realtors. The filings rose 19 percent from April.
A jump in foreclosures at a time of year that traditionally is the busiest for home sales means the slide in prices probably isn’t over, said James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. Typically, more than half of all home sales occur in the April to June period, according to Freddie Mac, the No. 2 mortgage buyer.
“Such strong activity in the midst of the typical spring buying season could foreshadow even higher foreclosure levels later in the year,” Saccacio said in the report. That will add “to the downward pressure on home prices in many areas.”
…
New Jersey was in the No. 15 slot, with one foreclosure filing for every 843 households, and New York ranked No. 30, with one foreclosure filing for every 1,818 households.
From RealtyTrac:
FORECLOSURE ACTIVITY INCREASES 19 PERCENT IN MAY
New Jersey Data:
Rank: 15
NOD: 2,890
NTS: 891
REO: 147
Total: 3,928 (Note, this number doesn’t represent individual foreclosures but the total of “foreclosure related events”.
Change from April: 25.82% Increase
Change from May 06: 101.95% Increase
re: Bloomberg: Regulators Kept Quiet as Subprime Lenders `Targeted’ Minorities
By Craig Torres
June 13 (Bloomberg) — The U.S. agencies that supervise more than 8,000 banks haven’t censured any of them for violating fair-lending laws, three years after Federal Reserve researchers began assembling data showing blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to be saddled with high-priced home loans.
Minorities stand to be hardest hit by rising delinquencies and foreclosures in subprime loans. While Census Bureau data show that homeownership rates rose to records among blacks in 2004 and among Hispanics in 2005, they still trail whites by 25 percentage points, and the gap may widen in the current bust.
“Black people and Hispanics have been targeted,” said Alphonso Jackson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, whose department is hiring to expand its own probe of discriminatory lending.
“Low and moderate-income people get one shot at home ownership,” Jackson said in an interview in Washington. “And if they don’t make it work, they don’t get a second shot.”
Subprime loans — those made at higher interest rates to people whom banks consider risky or who have sketchy credit histories — accounted for more than half of the home foreclosures in the fourth quarter of last year. The Fed’s review, conducted by economists from its research and statistics division, covered lending data from 2004 and 2005, the first two years of expanded disclosure requirements for banks and the final two years of Alan Greenspan’s tenure as chairman.
Closer Scrutiny
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=a6F6StSPKNig&refer=news
JB,
(I doubt anyone else will see this)
Thanks for linking to RealtyTrac’s press release. This is something you should try to do more often, especially with NAR releases. I know the big media sites get the info up first, but really all they have is a rehash of the press release so you’re better off getting it from the horse’s mouth.
Obviously you put more time and effort into the site then is sane, so asking for more is always done with gratitude for what you do without expectation of a request being fulfilled, but you might even consider writing your own story off the releases.
That’s a whole new brand of fun.