Foreclosure Update in MA
July 30th, 2008
The Boston Business Journal and the Warren Group reported today that the foreclosures in Massachusetts doubled over the first 6 months of the year compared to last year.
Not good news, especially for the 6,707 homeowners who had foreclosure deeds recorded on their homes.
The recording of a foreclosure deed is the final step of a foreclosure process. In the lengthy process that the banks go thru in order to foreclose, looking at the different foreclosure filings is a great indicator as to how the MA market is doing.
The first step in the foreclosure process is called “petition to foreclose”. These numbers are a bit confusing. In June of 2007 there were 2,308 petitions filed, and in 2008 there were only 350. This is a huge drop. Perhaps a more accurate number may be the year-to-date petitions which increased to 13,076 from 12,899 in 2007, which is a 1.4% increase.
The explanation by The Warren Group is that a recent law passed postpones foreclosure petitions. Ah-ha, that explains it!
So back to that first number, with 6,707 foreclosure deeds recorded in the first half of this year. You have to compare it to the market as a whole to put it in perspective. (at least I do)
The Massachusetts housing market has experienced 40-50,000 single family home sales for the past 10 years. The condo market accounts for about another 20,000 sales per year.
Doubling our current pace brings us to a bit over 13,000 foreclosure deeds. That would be 22% of the yearly market. Sounds like a big number! I will keep you posted on how this changes and if this recording of foreclosure deeds turns out to not make it to a final foreclosure in the end.
Categories: Market Conditions, Real Estate
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Market Conditions, Real Estate. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Have you noticed lawmakers continue to write laws to delay the foreclosures rather than letting the market correct itself and move on? It seems like it just happens over and over….
Not good news, but the sooner we get through these rocky times, the better.
Aloha,
Keahi
Interesting…