Foreclosure rates jump for most of nation's top metro areas – decline in most of Central Valley

SANTA ANA
July 29, 2010 5:38am

Modesto, Merced and Stockton are still among the nation’s ten worst areas for foreclosures, but the three actually had declining foreclosure rates in the first half of the year, according to a report Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc., an Irvine-based foreclosure information company.

The three Central Valley metro areas rank third, fourth and sixth in the nation in foreclosures per capita.

Nationally, the RealtyTrac report shows 154 of the 206 U.S. metropolitan areas with a population of 200,000 or more posted year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity even while foreclosure activity decreased in nine of the 10 metros with the highest foreclosure rates.

Four states -- Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona -- accounted for all top 20 metro foreclosure rates. Florida led the way, with nine of the top 20 metro foreclosure rates, followed by California with eight, Nevada with two and Arizona with one.

Within the national Top 20 are Bakersfield at 12th, Sacramento at 14th and Visalia-Porterville in 19th place.

"While we're seeing early signs that foreclosure activity may have peaked in some of the hardest-hit markets, foreclosures continued to rise in three-quarters of the nation's metropolitan areas in the first half of the year," says James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac.

"The fragile stability achieved in many local housing markets hinges on improvements in the underlying economy, specifically job growth. If unemployment remains persistently high and foreclosure prevention efforts only delay the inevitable, then we could continue to see increased foreclosure activity and a corresponding weakness in home prices in many metro areas."

Compared to the first six months of 2009, the Valley’s Top 20 metros have seen declines in the frantic pace of foreclosing on homes.

• Modesto, with 4.59 foreclosures filings for every 100 homes, saw its rate decline by 14.02 percent

• Merced, with 4.47 foreclosures per 100 homes, had its rate plunge by 34.64 percent

• Stockton’s 4.37 foreclosures for every 100 homes, saw its rate drop by 21.80 percent

• Bakersfield’s foreclosure rate dropped by 17.79 percent to 3.67 homes per 100

• Sacramento’s metro area had 3.19 homes foreclosed for every 100, a rate that was 6.99 percent under a year earlier

• The Visalia-Porterville metro was down 4.99 percent to 2.72 homes foreclosed for every 100.

Fresno was just outside the Top 20, coming in at 21st worst in the nation with a rate of 2.70, down 11.14 percent from a year earlier.

Chico is an exception to the Valley’s downward foreclosure trends. It was up sharply in the first six months of 2010 compared to a year earlier. Chico ranks 48th for the first six months of the year, with a rate of 1.64 percent, up 21.72 percent.


Las Vegas continued to post the nation's highest metro foreclosure rate in the first half of the year, with 6.60 percent of its housing units (one in 15) receiving a foreclosure filing -- more than five times the national average. But the 53,525 Las Vegas properties receiving a foreclosure filing during the six-month period was a decrease of nearly 15 percent from the previous six months and a decrease of nearly 9 percent from the first half of 2009.

Methodology


The RealtyTrac U.S. Foreclosure Market Report provides a count of the total number of properties with at least one foreclosure filing entered into the RealtyTrac database during the first six months of the year for metropolitan statistical areas with a population of 200,000 or more based on Census bureau estimates. Some foreclosure filings entered into the database during a six-month period may have been recorded in previous time periods. Data is collected from more than 2,200 counties nationwide, and those counties account for more than 90 percent of the U.S. population. RealtyTrac's report incorporates documents filed in all three phases of foreclosure: Default -- Notice of Default (NOD) and Lis Pendens (LIS); Auction -- Notice of Trustee Sale and Notice of Foreclosure Sale (NTS and NFS); and Real Estate Owned, or REO properties (that have been foreclosed on and repurchased by a bank). If more than one foreclosure document is received for a property during the six-month period, only the most recent filing is counted in the report. If the same type of foreclosure document was filed against a property previous to the six-month period but within the estimated foreclosure timeframe for the state where the property is located, the report does not count the property in the six-month period.