Foreclosure activity was down in the state of Hawaii but nationally there was a slight surge in foreclosures.
A trend of 37 months of rising foreclosures in Hawaii was broken in July but experts are not agreeing on whether they are seeing the easing of the foreclosures crisis in the state. A report pointed out that 930 auctions for foreclosure occurred in July in Hawaii which meant a 6% drop from July last year that clocked 990. It was the first year over year decline reported in any month ever since May 2007, some time before the nasty melt down in the housing market.
The numbers for July was the lowest since November’s 872 filings and peak of 1534 in December. In Hawaii the improvement was concentrated in figures for filings at early stage such as default notices or notices for trustee sales. But number of repossessions by lenders surged.
The total number of notices of default and trustee sales was 518 which was the least since February 2009 with 466 filings. Majority of July foreclosures was repossession by banks. The numbers were 412, a record compared to 323 in July 2009.This implies that new foreclosures are falling while existing foreclosures are leaving the foreclosure market at a high speed. The report suggests that such a trend is also observable in other states severely hit by foreclosures crisis such as Nevada, Arizona and California.
Experts say it is a good sign to see easing of initial foreclosures notices in Hawaii. But some are skeptical and say that the trend could be because lenders may be postponing processing of a large backlog of foreclosure delinquencies due to difficulties of workload. A clearer picture of the foreclosures situation in Hawaii will emerge only after the data for the next few months becomes available.
Compared with other states, Hawaii’s rate of foreclosures was number 16 with one for every 515 households. The numbers for the nation was one for every 397 households. The worst figure was for Nevada with one for every 82 homes and the best was West Virginia with 1 per 10,307 homes. In Hawaii, Honolulu had the highest filings with 361.
Nationally, default notices, auction notices and bank repossessions were counted for 325,229 properties, a drop of 10% compared to last year. More than a sign of recovery of the housing market experts believe it is the result of foreclosure prevention efforts of the state and federal governments. This is a highly volatile situation with total foreclosure filings rising by 4% from June, 2010.
The number of default notices has plunged since last six months, but bank repossessions have been surging since the last eight months at record levels. Volatility will persist as lenders push properties under foreclosure into the foreclosure prevention program. Thus easing of foreclosures will be ascertained only in the next few months.
