California Foreclosure Activity Collapses in May

Just when it seems like foreclosure activity should be picking up, it drops sharply from April.

HAMP is finally rejecting more applicants than it’s taking in. Government stimulus is winding down. And, we’ve got a full 22-month build-up of shadow inventory (CA issued it’s first foreclosure moratorium in August of 2008).  Foreclosure actions should be increasing quite a bit, but it appears that “extend and pretend” will continue for a while longer…

ForeclosureRadar reports California Foreclosure Activity Drops

Discovery Bay, CA, June 15, 2010 – ForeclosureRadar (www.foreclosureradar.com), the only website that tracks every California foreclosure and provides daily auction updates, issued its monthly California Foreclosure Report for May 2010. Foreclosure filings, outcomes and inventories dropped across the board from April to May. Foreclosure filings also declined substantially year-over-year with Notice of Default filings down 43.3 percent and Notice of Trustee Sale filings down 35.8 percent. The only significant increases from the prior year were Cancellations, up 141.3 percent, Sales to 3rd Parties, typically investors, up 75.4 percent, and Time-to-Foreclose, up 30.5 percent from May 2009.

“Given the staggering number of delinquent home loans, foreclosure activity should be rising not falling as we found again this month” says Sean O’Toole, Founder and CEO of ForeclosureRadar.com. “We have recently witnessed a number of Cancellations where the owners have vacated the property and are clearly not working to modify their loan or complete a short sale. The most telling statistic that we present today may be that it takes lenders two months longer to foreclose then it did a year ago.”