Area fares better than nation in foreclosures
Forecloses in Western New York continue to trail national averages. The number of completed bank repossessions in Erie County fell in September and during the entire third quarter from a year ago.
According to the Erie County clerk’s office, foreclosures totaled 224 in the third quarter — July through September, including 65 in September.
The quarterly figure is down 46 percent from a year ago and 54 percent from 2005, while the September total is down 55 percent from last year and 70 percent from 2005.
But trouble could be brewing for some homeowners. The number of initial foreclosure filings, known as lis pendens, rose to 212 in September, a 51 percent increase from a year earlier. Erie County Clerk Kathleen C. Hochul said the September 2008 figure of 140 was “unusually low,” so the comparison “is somewhat skewed.”
For the third quarter, such initial filings rose to 687, an increase of 11.5 percent from the second quarter and 8.8 percent from a year ago.
But perhaps more importantly, the September figure was down 15.5 percent, while the third-quarter figure dropped by 12.3 percent from the corresponding periods in 2005, before the U. S. economy nose-dived.
“Foreclosures continue to be lower than prerecession times, even significantly lower than in 2005,” Hochul said. “We are looking at overall trends, and Erie County is still dramatically better than most parts of the country when it comes to families losing their homes to foreclosures.”
Even the national research firm often criticized in Buffalo for inaccurately reporting local foreclosures indicates Western New York is faring well compared with other cities.
RealtyTrac of Irvine, Calif., reported that filings for some stage of foreclosure were made against 1,068 properties in the Buffalo-Niagara Falls metropolitan area in the third quarter. That’s just 0.21 percent of area housing units, or one for every 488 units, ranking Buffalo 162nd out of 203 urban areas nationwide. Other upstate cities were even lower.
By contrast, in Las Vegas, the city with the highest foreclosure rate, some sort of foreclosure filing was made against one of every 20 homes.
RealtyTrac’s local numbers include more than just Erie County and combine both initial filings and actual foreclosures, as well as related filings in between.
The apparent discrepancy locally between the rise in initial filings and the drop in actual repossessions might reflect the state’s recent efforts to combat the rising tide of foreclosures.
State law now requires settlement conferences between borrowers and their lenders or loan servicers before a foreclosure can be completed. The requirement aims to get the parties together to modify the loan or otherwise work out a solution so the borrower stays in the home.
So while companies may start the foreclosure process, they are less likely to complete it, and it now takes longer.
“It’s not perfect, but a lot of the banks had to take a step back to see if the borrower would actually qualify for a modification, and the modifications are better,” said acting Supreme Court Justice Timothy J. Walker, who handles the settlement conferences for Western New York.
In the rest of the country, the crisis continues unabated. Nationwide, the number of properties affected by foreclosure filings rose to 937,840, up 5 percent from the second quarter and nearly 23 percent from a year ago, according to Realty- Trac.
That means one in every 136 U. S. housing units was subject to a foreclosure filing of some sort made during the quarter— the highest quarterly rate since RealtyTrac began issuing its report in early 2005. The firm tracks default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions in counties across the nation.
For September alone, filings were reported on 343,638 properties, down 4 percent from August, but up 29 percent from September 2008. And even with the month-to-month decrease, September still posted the third-highest monthly total since January 2005, behind only the previous two months of July and August of this year.
Nevada still posted the highest foreclosure rate for any state, with one of every 23 housing units subject to a foreclosure filing. That’s six times the national average. Arizona was second, followed by California, with both reporting a filing for one in every 53 units.
Florida, Idaho, Utah, Georgia, Michigan, Colorado and Illinois constitute the rest of the top 10. And California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Illinois and Michigan together accounted for 62 percent of the total foreclosure filings nationwide, with a total of 579,541 affected properties.
During the third quarter, New York had 11,048 initial foreclosure filings, plus 2,316 notices of foreclosure sales, or auction filings, and 1,877 bank repossessions, for a total of 15,242 filings, according to RealtyTrac.
That’s a rate of one for every 521 housing units, up 11.6 percent from the second quarter and 5.28 percent higher than a year ago. That ranks the state 38th in the nation.
For September, New York had 3,902 initial filings, 824 notices of foreclosure sales and 967 repossessions, or 5,693 in all — up 6.41 percent from August and 71.37 percent higher from a year ago.
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