And you thought April 15 couldn’t get any worse…add RealtyTrac’s U.S. Foreclosure Market Report out last Thursday that shows a 7% increase in foreclosure filings for the first quarter of 2010.
March filings were up almost 19% over the previous month and up 8% from March of 2009. Nevada, Arizona and Florida were the top three states for foreclosure filings in the first quarter, and California came in at #4, even though the state’s foreclosure rate dropped 6% from the same period last year.
And California still accounts for 23% of the nation’s total foreclosure activity all by itself.
From the April 15 report:
“Foreclosure activity in the first quarter of 2010 followed a very similar pattern to what we saw in the first quarter of 2009: a shallow trough in January and February followed by a substantial spike in March,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “One difference, however, is that the increases were more tilted toward the final stage of foreclosure, with REOs increasing 9 percent on a quarterly basis in the first quarter of 2010 compared to a 13 percent quarterly decrease in REOs in the first quarter of 2009.
“This subtle shift in the numbers pushed REOs to the highest quarterly total we’ve ever seen in our report and may be further evidence that lenders are starting to make a dent in the backlog of distressed inventory that has built up over the last year as foreclosure prevention programs and processing delays slowed down the normal foreclosure timeline.”
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