Foreclosure numbers -- and what they don't include
Lloyd Fox / Sun staff
RealtyTrac released numbers today showing foreclosure "events" in Maryland last month -- default filings, notices of impending auctions and new bank-owned foreclosures -- increasing nearly fivefold from a year earlier. That's about 2,800 properties in danger of foreclosure or newly foreclosed upon.
But here's the thing: The company's grand total is almost certainly lower than reality. That's because it has a hard time getting timely default notices from most courts in the state, so this part of the foreclosure process is being tallied only in some counties.
RealtyTrac, a California-based firm that acts as an online marketplace for foreclosed properties, believes it has good numbers in Maryland for the auction notices and homes taken back by lenders. So those are the figures to look at.
They're depressing, too, unless you're on the hunt for bargain buys.
More than 1,700 auction notices were issued in the state last month, triple the number in September of last year. And about 220 properties were taken back by lenders because no one else bought them at auction, a tenfold increase.
It's an improvement over August, though, when both categories were about 10 percent higher.
RealtyTrac doesn't put year-over-year comparisons on its press releases for these individual categories, only the grand total, so keep that in mind if you track foreclosure trends. The "NFS" category -- notice of foreclosure sale -- is where the overwhelming majority of Maryland's auction notice numbers will be, though you may see a few under "NTS" (notice of trustee sale). REO -- for real estate owned -- is the category showing properties newly taken back by the bank.
Perhaps you think this is a hassle and the grand totals are close enough? Check out this graph comparing 2006 totals (called "foreclosure events") in the Baltimore area to 2006 default notice filings from the courts, which I pulled this year for a story. By rights, the grand totals ought to be bigger than the number of default notices because they include all steps of the foreclosure process, but instead they're much smaller:
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