Local and national foreclosures decline

Happy Thursday! Foreclosure processing delays helped significantly reduce the number of families that received mortgage default notices both in Minnesota and across the country last month, according to data released this morning by RealtyTrac.

In Minnesota 2,813 properties were the subject of a foreclosure filing in May, that's one for every 829 households. That was a 6.3 percent increase from April and an 11.2 percent decline from May 2010. Nationwide the overall foreclosure rate was slightly higher. One in every 605 households received a foreclosure notice, that was a 1.9 percent decline from April and a 33.4 percent drop from last year.
Default notices, the first step in the foreclosure process and an indicator of future foreclosure activity, fell 39 percent compared with last year to their lowest level since December 2006.
On the surface the declines seem like good news for the long-suffering housing market, but they mask general turmoil among the lenders that are trying to navigate the complicated task of process defaults.
James Saccacio, the chief executive officer at RealtyTrac, said lenders are "unevenly pushing batches of bad loans through foreclosure as they overhaul their paperwork and documentation procedures and and as they determine that some local markets are able to absorb more foreclosure inventory."