Inventories of bank-owned foreclosures for sale vary increasingly by state as the latest local data suggests that lenders are beginning to release a long-awaited wave of more than one million backlogged foreclosures, primarily in states where a court order is required to foreclose, known as judicial states.

More than half of all Americans are concerned that a huge wave of backlogged foreclosures to be released by major lenders in the wake of the Robo-signing scandal will lower home values in their markets. Read More »

Eleven of the nation’s 20 largest metro areas based on population documented annual increases in foreclosure activity, led by the Florida cities of Tampa (59 percent) and Miami (38 percent). Other cities with increases included St. Louis (29 percent), Chicago (26 percent), Philadelphia (24 percent), and Atlanta (21 percent). Read More »

Short sales, once a rare event in local real estate market, today are nearly as prevalent as foreclosures as lenders seek to avoid adding to their foreclosure inventories and troubled homeowners opt for a faster way out of default. (See Banks and Investors Learn to Love Short Sales). Read More »

Standard and Poor’s Rating Services’ estimates that the time it will take to clear the supply of distressed homes, or the shadow inventory, on the U.S. market is now 46 months. For the city with the greatest estimate of the time it will take to clear its inventory of foreclosures and short sales, New York City, it will take 202 months, or nearly 17 years. Read More »

For years, the Washington metro area has ranked high on every list of the nation’s hottest markets. Now, however, the region’s multiple listing service, MRIS, is holding its breath and closely monitoring the situation as a wave of backlogged foreclosures freed by the resolution of the Robogate processing scandal prepares to wash over local markets and threaten vulnerable jurisdictions. Read More »

March foreclosure starts increased a modest 8.1 percent in March over February while foreclosure sales continued to behave somewhat erratically, dropping to their lowest level since December 2010, and most sharply in non-judicial states. Read More »

While inventories of homes for sale have been shrinking this spring, MLSs are filling the void with rental listings for single family homes that until recently were foreclosures. Some 16.1 percent of all listings on MLSs today are rentals, more than double the number in 2006. Read More »

The market share of foreclosures and short sales have fallen 27 percent from a year ago, pulling down March overall existing home sales 2.6 percent as inventories of foreclosures and short sales suddenly declined last month. Read More »

The rates that foreclosures and short sales are discounted from full-price properties have declined significantly in 2012, especially discounts for higher priced properties and in some of the markets hit hardest by foreclosures in the past. Read More »