Foreclosure activity continued to climb last month in Riverside and San Bernardino counties, fueled by falling home values and resets of adjustable mortgages to higher interest rates.
The two-county Inland region once again led Southern California in the rate of foreclosure-related filings, including notices of defaults, trustee sales and lender repossessions. Statewide, Riverside County ranked fourth among counties with a filing for every 92 households and San Bernardino County ranked fifth with a filing for every 108 households.
Daren Blomquist, spokesman for Irvine-based RealtyTrac, which on Monday released the March foreclosure data, said the firm had expected an even steeper increase in foreclosures because many mortgages with low introductory interest have been resetting to higher rates.
Riverside County’s foreclosure-related filings last month totaled 7,960, an increase of 30 percent from February and 127 percent from March 2007. San Bernardino County had 6,182 filings, up 25 percent from February and 118 percent from a year earlier.
“We are somewhat surprised there hasn’t been a bigger uptick in foreclosure activity,” Blomquist said.
One reason might be that programs aimed at stemming foreclosures — from increasing the availability of government-sponsored mortgages to lowering interest rates and promoting deals between lenders and strapped borrowers — are helping, he said.
Foreclosure activity is expected to peak later this year based on subprime mortgage resets, said Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist for the California Association of Realtors.
She said although some homeowners may avert catastrophe with the assistance of various programs, the problem is much too large to disappear.
Another possibility is that the foreclosure workload is overwhelming lenders.
“I have heard anecdotally that some people who have not made (mortgage) payments for quite a few months have not had a notice of default yet,” Blomquist said.
On the positive side, she said in parts of the state, lenders burdened with foreclosed properties have lowered prices on repossessed homes to the point that they are attracting first-time buyers.
RealtyTrac reported that foreclosure filings on 64,711 homes were recorded in California in March, the most for any state for the 15th consecutive month. California’s foreclosure activity last month increased nearly 21 percent from February and almost 106 percent from a year earlier.
Pete Nyiri, owner of Top Producers Realty in Corona, a large marketer of bank-seized homes, said he has seen an increase in sales of homes priced below $300,000
For the fourth consecutive month California ranked second among states in the rate of foreclosure, trailing only Nevada.
One in every 204 California households received a foreclosure-related notice last month, which was 2.6 times the national average. In Nevada one in every 139 households received a foreclosure notice.
Tags: foreclosure, home, home values, households, rates
