RealtyTrac says that one of 45 houses is facing foreclosure

Here is an interesting trend. Most regions in the US witnessed foreclosures last year except for New Jersey and Pennsylvania. According to RealtyTrac, at least one out of 45 houses was foreclosed, making the total percentage 2.21 per cent.

In fact, foreclosure notices went up from1.03 per cent in ’07 to 1.84 per cent in ’08. In comparison to the national average, Pennsylvania’s rate was much lower at 0.82 per cent. That means only one out of 122 houses received a foreclosure this year.

The rate at which foreclosures happened in New Jersey was much higher at 1.81 per cent. That means one out of 55 houses received foreclosure filings. The high number is primarily because of the court system clearing the backlog of the last few years.

In Nevada, the situation is the worst. Here one out of 10 homes is in various stages of foreclosure. In comparison, in Vermont the foreclosure filing rate was very low. There is only one foreclosure here out of 2,178 properties. The CEO of RealtyTrac, James J. Saccacio, says that the figure would have been much lower if "not for legislative and industry-related delays in processing delinquent loans." In December, the foreclosure activity was at a record high.

Saccacio also says that there will be a surge of delinquent loans in 2010. Many of these will be foreclosed as banks clear the backlog. What’s worse, there are even multiple filings on a few properties. In 2009, that number totaled 3,957,643. This is 21 per cent more than the figure in ’08 and 120 per cent higher than what it was in ’07.

The Federal government had come up with programs like Making Home Affordable Program. However, the pace of the program has been slow. Yet it brought down the number of foreclosure filings between the months of August and November. In December, foreclosure filings again reached a record high.

According to Treasury Department records, the lenders are just not interested in modifying mortgages voluntarily. In fact, only 31,000 out of a total of 650,000 mortgages have been modified permanently by November end.

There are also many more millions of troubled loans which have not been considered by the government. Also unemployment levels are high. As people are losing jobs even those with very good credit history are defaulting on mortgage payments. In fact, defaults by the salaried people constitute a major pie of mortgage defaults now.

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