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Fewer homes of Americans repossessed
By Alex Veiga |
May 13, 2011, Friday
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Print Edition
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Fewer Americans had their homes repossessed by banks or were put on notice for being behind on their mortgage payments in April compared to a year ago.
That would ordinarily suggest improving fortunes for United States homeowners, but the decline had less to do with any turnaround in the housing market than with foreclosure processing delays that appear to be getting worse. That is threatening to drag out a housing recovery, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc said yesterday.
It's taking longer for lenders to move against homeowners who have stopped paying their mortgage and to take back homes already in some stage of the foreclosure process. In states like New York, for example, it now takes an average of more than two years for a home to go from the initial stage of foreclosure to being repossessed by a bank, the firm said.
Those delays, partly due to banks working through foreclosure documentation problems that came to light last fall, means it could take many more years for lenders to deal with a backlog of seriously delinquent properties, which numbers up to 3.7 million, by some estimates.
"It's going to take between three to four years just to get those loans into foreclosure at our current pace," said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac. "And that doesn't spell good news for the housing market."
Banks repossessed 69,532 homes last month, down 5 percent from March and down 25 percent compared with April of last year, according to RealtyTrac, which tracks warnings sent to homeowners.
That would ordinarily suggest improving fortunes for United States homeowners, but the decline had less to do with any turnaround in the housing market than with foreclosure processing delays that appear to be getting worse. That is threatening to drag out a housing recovery, foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac Inc said yesterday.
It's taking longer for lenders to move against homeowners who have stopped paying their mortgage and to take back homes already in some stage of the foreclosure process. In states like New York, for example, it now takes an average of more than two years for a home to go from the initial stage of foreclosure to being repossessed by a bank, the firm said.
Those delays, partly due to banks working through foreclosure documentation problems that came to light last fall, means it could take many more years for lenders to deal with a backlog of seriously delinquent properties, which numbers up to 3.7 million, by some estimates.
"It's going to take between three to four years just to get those loans into foreclosure at our current pace," said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac. "And that doesn't spell good news for the housing market."
Banks repossessed 69,532 homes last month, down 5 percent from March and down 25 percent compared with April of last year, according to RealtyTrac, which tracks warnings sent to homeowners.
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