Foreclosure Filings Spiked in August

Another day, another reminder that the foreclosure crisis is far from over. The number of foreclosures jumped 7 percent in August according to RealtyTrac, a website of classified ads for foreclosed properties.

The pain in particularly hard-hit states shows no sign of easing. Foreclosures spiked to their highest levels in the last 12 months in California, Florida and Michigan. According to RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio, the pain isn’t going to end anytime soon.

“The big increase in new foreclosure actions … foreshadows more bank repossessions in the coming months as these new foreclosures make their way through the process,” Saccacio said in a press release.

The report finds that all foreclosure filings, including default notices, auctions and bank repossessions, increased 7 percent in August to 228,098. That equates to one out of every 570 housing units in the U.S. receiving a foreclosure filing that month.

Default notices, the first step in the foreclosure process, spiked 33 percent in August nationwide. Some states fared much worse. California topped the list, with a 55 percent spike in such notices.

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The sudden increase may be due to the fact that banks have largely resolved issues that briefly slowed the rate of foreclosures—by the robosigning scandal, and questions over whether they could prove they actually owned the mortgages on the properties they foreclosed upon—and started to process foreclosures at a quicker pace, Saccacio said. Despite the uptick, the number of foreclosures is still down 33 percent from their recent record high, set in August 2010.

Image: truthout.org, via Flickr.com