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Foreclosures hit a 10-year low and property owners in all but 15
states experienced fewer of the early stages of foreclosure,
usually begun after owners have missed four mortgage payments,
according to the report by ATTOM Data Solutions, formerly called
RealtyTrac.
Final repossessions of properties also dropped overall, but did
increase in 21 states and the District of Columbia, including
Massachusetts, Alabama, New York, Virginia and New Jersey.
Daren Blomquist, spokesman for the Irvine, California, data
company, said just over half of the foreclosures that did take
place were related to the housing crisis, which began in 2008
amid turmoil in the financial markets and the bursting of a
years-long bubble in U.S. real estate prices.
Altogether in the United States last year, about 379,000 owners
lost their property to banks under foreclosure, down from 1.05
million in 2009 at the height of the mortgage and housing
crisis.
Another 479,000 properties were under the early stages of
foreclosure, which do not always lead to repossession. That is
down from a peak of 2.14 million in the early stages in 2009.
In some states last year, including Hawaii, New Jersey and
Nevada, nearly two-thirds of the foreclosures were related to
the financial crisis, as banks slowly worked their way through a
backlog of cases and consumers ran out of protections, Blomquist
said.
Many of the remaining foreclosures were related to local
economic issues, he said.
Overall foreclosure activity increased in about a quarter of
U.S. metropolitan areas with more than 200,000 people, the
report said. Among the metro areas where properties in some
stage of foreclosure increased in 2016 were Provo-Orem, Utah;
Honolulu, Hawaii; Lynchburg, Virginia; Springfield,
Massachusetts; and Tucson, Arizona. Foreclosures increased by
about 30 percent in those areas, the report said.
Foreclosures also increased in Washington, D.C.
(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein in Sacramento, California;
Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
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