U.S. mortgage servicers and lenders are notifying more delinquent homeowners that they are facing foreclosure, this according to RealtyTrac’s Midyear 2012 Foreclosure Market Report.
RealtyTrac reported that foreclosure process has been started in the second quarter of this year in 311,010 U.S. housing units. According to RealtyTrac, this is a 9% rise from the preceding quarter; a 6% rise from the second quarter of last year; and the first year-over-year increase in quarterly foreclosure starts since the fourth quarter of 2009.
In the first six months of 2012, RealtyTrac reported that 1,045,801 U.S. properties have foreclosure filings – those properties with default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions. The RealtyTrac report also shows that 0.79 % or one in 126 of all U.S. housing units had at least one foreclosure filing in the first half of 2012.
Brandon Moore, CEO of RealtyTrac, said in a statement, “Lenders and servicers are slowly but surely catching up with the backlog of delinquent loans that under normal circumstances would have started the foreclosure process last year, and that catching up is why the average time to complete the foreclosure process started to level off or decrease in some states in the second quarter.”
The CEO of RealtyTrac added, “The increases in foreclosure starts in the first half of the year will likely translate into more short sales and bank repossessions in the second half of the year and into next year.”
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