Foreclosure activity was down nationally, but result varied considerably across the nation's local markets.
Foreclosure filings, which encompass default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions, were the lowest in April in five years, according to the latest data from RealtyTrac.
The 188,780 filings for April were a 5 percent decline from March and a 14 percent drop from April 2011. Overall, one in every 698 U.S. housing units had a foreclosure filing in the month.
Brandon Moore, the CEO of RealtyTrac, said the declines may be deceptive, given the local nature of foreclosure markets.
“Rising foreclosure activity in many state and local markets in April was masked at the national level by sizable decreases in hard-hit foreclosure states like California, Arizona and Nevada,” Moore said. “Those three states, and several other non-judicial foreclosure states like them, more efficiently processed foreclosures last year, resulting in fewer catch-up foreclosures this year.”
Indeed, the judicial/non-judicial divide has become increasingly marked, as foreclosure inventories continue to linger in certain markets. Just last week, Foreclosure-Response released its own foreclosure data with particular emphasis on the distinction.
In RealtyTrac’s data, foreclosure activity in the 26 judicial states was down 3 percent from March to April but up 15 percent from April 2011, with monthly activity falling in 14 of the states and yearly activity increasing in 15.
For Miami, there were 9,031 foreclosure filings in April, which represents 1 in every 273 units and is the second highest rate in the country. Though the filings were 9.18 percent lower than in March, they were 38.43 percent higher from last April, and Ada Clavijo, the office manager of Macken Realty, said she has observed a definite increase in activity from her position.
As manager, Clavijo processes all foreclosure transactions once buyers are found for the properties, and she said across the Miami area, she’s seeing an increase in activity.
“We’ve seen foreclosures all over,” she said. “Fort Lauderdale, especially more of Miami Beach.”
Miami Beach, Clavijo continued, has been particularly interesting. For some time, the office saw little inventory from the area, but now, many of the investor-purchased properties from the boom years are entering the market – and are promptly being purchased by other investors. Clavijo said that between Argentina, Venezuela and Israel, foreign investors are comprising a huge chunk of the office’s foreclosure transactions (Israel alone has accounted for 25 percent of the transactions).
A big cause of the uptick, Clavijo said, was the mortgage settlement, which freed up many banks to work through their foreclosure inventory with much more fluidity. Evictions, which used to take more than 60 days, now take no more than 30 days, and inventory is moving so freely that Macken Realty has just one property on hold, a dramatic change from before, when 75 percent of the foreclosure inventory was on hold by banks.
Foreclosure starts were similarly local-driven. Though nationally, starts were down 4 percent from march and 2 percent from April 2011, 26 states posted monthly increases and 27 year-over-year increases. States with the biggest annual increases in foreclosure starts included New Jersey (180 percent), Utah (179 percent), Indiana (49 percent), Pennsylvania (44 percent), Florida (43 percent) and Michigan (42 percent).