Foreclosures are by far one of the biggest threats to the U.S. housing market, which remains highly vulnerable to setbacks and heavily reliant on government intervention. If foreclosures keep dropping, it will be one of the strongest signals yet the market is on the path to recovery.
Foreclosure filings – including mortgage default notices, house auctions and home repossessions by banks – were reported on 308,524 properties in February, down 2 percent from January, but still up 6 percent from the year-ago month, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said.
“The 6 percent year-over-year increase we saw in February was the smallest annual increase we’ve seen since January 2006, when we began calculating year-over-year increases, but it still marked the 50th consecutive month of year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, in a statement. (From Reuters)
Yes US foreclosures have dropped a little bit, but what they are not telling you, that there is a big increase in foreclosures in the high end market (Million dollar homes). So the math is really simple: $1 million divided by $200K = 5 average houses
I guess the conclusion is that the foreclosures did drop but now we are losing more money. (So maybe this is good news for Gennie Mae and Fannie Mae, since they don’t provide Jumbo loans) We are talking about the housing markets in California, Nevada, Florida and Arizona.