This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, May 16, 2012 - The nation’s laborious climb out of the housing pit continues with yet another round of good and bad foreclosure numbers.
The good news: April’s monthly total of foreclosure filings was the nation’s lowest since July 2007, according to RealtyTrac, a firm that tracks foreclosure statistics.
The bad news: More than half of the nation’s 20 largest metropolitan areas reported annual increases in foreclosure filings -- all of them in the Midwest, South and on the East Coast. One in every 698 U.S. housing units had a foreclosure filing of some type in April.
What about here? Foreclosure activity in St. Louis was up 29 percent compared to April 2011. On the other hand, foreclosure activity remained about the same here as last month (a decrease of 0.33 percent from March 2012). St. Louis was among 11 large metro areas with annual increases in foreclosure activity.
Brandon Moore, CEO of RealtyTrac, said that rising foreclosure activity in many state and local markets is being masked by an overall decrease in the nation’s total. Hard-hit Western states like California, Arizona and Nevada are no longer playing catch-up with foreclosures, and sizable decreases in those states brought the national total down from previous months.
“In addition, more distressed loans are being diverted into short sales rather than becoming completed foreclosures,” Moore said in the report.
Here are some key numbers from the RealtyTrac report released Thursday morning:
188,780: The nation’s total of foreclosure filings -- default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions -- in April. That was a 5 percent decrease from March and a 14 percent decrease from April 2011.
1,793: Properties in the St. Louis metropolitan area that received a foreclosure filing in April. The local number accounted for a sizable chunk of the state’s total for the month, which was 2,498.
1 in 696: April’s foreclosure activity in St. Louis was just about the national average of one in every 698 housing units. Missouri’s rate was about one in every 1,086 housing units.
21: Missouri’s rank in foreclosure activity in April, compared to the nation. Foreclosure notices in the state increased just 2 percent from March and 1 percent from one year ago.
6: Illinois’ national rank in foreclosure activity in April. Foreclosure notices in the Land of Lincoln increased by 26 percent from April 2011, but were down 8 percent from last month. The state had a total of 12,661 filings in April -- about one in every 418 housing units. Chicago had the lion’s share of the state’s foreclosure filings: 11,840. About one in every 321 housing units in Chicago received a foreclosure notice in April.
To read the entire report, click here.
