American Foreclosures Continue To Rise by Dan Levy

NEW American foreclosures have risen 50 percent in New York City and more than doubled in Seattle in October from a year earlier as falling prices and stricter mortgage standards keep home owners from selling or refinancing, according to PropertyShark.com.

American foreclosures increased 35 percent in Miami and 11 percent in Los Angeles, said PropertyShark, a Brooklyn-based online seller of real estate data. The New York increase came from defaults in the borough of Queens, which had 12 of the city’s top 15 ZIP codes with the most foreclosures, the company told Bloomberg News.

“The economy is on the decline and exotic mortgages are resetting,” Bill Staniford, CEO of PropertyShark, said in an interview. “Credit was available too freely, and that caused inflation of demand and over-development.”

A recession that began in the third quarter is deepening the housing slump and adding to mortgage defaults as companies shed jobs, according to Jay Brinkmann, chief economist for the Mortgage Bankers’ Association. Home prices fell 5.9 percent in August from a year earlier, the biggest drop since 1991, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The United States median sale price declined the most on record, the National Association of Realtors reported on September 24. PropertyShark compiled its data from default records and did not count a property more than once if it had received multiple foreclosure filings, Staniford said.

American foreclosures filings rose to a record in the third quarter as 765,558 properties got a default notice, were warned of auction or were foreclosed on, according to Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc, a seller of default data.

American Foreclosures Continue To Rise by Dan Levy