New South Florida foreclosures dropped by 50% from May to June, but the numbers could be more coincidence than the hoped for signs of recovery, with unemployment still on the rise.
According to numbers released Thursday by foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac the number of Miami homes and homes in Broward entering the foreclosure process fell 40% and 60%, respectively. New Florida foreclosures fell 19% statewide.
However, lenders took back nearly double the number of Miami homes through foreclosure auctions, even in the midst of improved efforts to make mortgage payments more affordable through loan modifications.
The vice president at mortgage industry publisher HSH Associates, Keith Gumbinger, called the data encouraging, but said it could also reflect less positive changes such as an increase in short sales. A short sale is the process when mortgage-holders sell their homes for less than the mortgage amount owed against them to avoid the foreclosure process.
''We're by no means out of the woods'', "Gumbinger wrote in an e-mail. " [It's] not yet time to declare an end to the increases. . . . We would need to see a couple months of decline before that would occur.''
The counties also saw marked drops in RealtyTrac's overall figures, which count properties that, are either at the start of legal action, have had a sales notice filed, or have been repossesed by the mortgage company.
Those numbers declined 24% and 43%, from May to June, in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, compared to an average decline of 10% statewide, and an average rise of nearly 5% for the nation.
Miami-Dade registered a 31% fall in the metric, Broward saw a nearly 10% increase and the state of Florida showed a decline of almost 9% in May.
Arden Shank of Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida, a foreclosure counseling group, said that regardless of the numbers, his office is still inundated by people in dire need of assistance.
''From what we experience, it continues full blast,'' he said, ``but we're dealing with such a tiny percentage of the whole that it could drop by 20% in terms of the filings and our numbers are going to be the same.''
RealtyTrac's nationwide figures paint a drearier picture, with the firm reporting an overall increase of nearly 5% in its foreclosure measure from May to June a jump encouraged in large part by a 21% rise in the number of homes repossessed by mortgage companies.
The definite increase follows Obama administration efforts to avert home foreclosures through its Making Home Affordable plan, a $75 billion program started in April that aims to help homeowners at risk of foreclosure refinance their loans at more reasonable rates.
But at Neighborhood Housing Services, Shank said he has seen only a few loan modifications through the program to date, mainly because lenders are still struggling with how to navigate the new system.
'We have sometimes talked with a lender or service representative and said, `this person qualifies under the new Making Home Affordable program, and their response is `Huh? What?,' '' Shank said. ``It just hasn't trickled down yet.''
Contributed by MLR Realty
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