From the Wall Street Journal:
The number of foreclosed U.S. homes
that were sold or seized by lenders in February fell to the lowest level in almost five and a half years, while the number
of homes slated for foreclosure also eased, data from CoreLogic showed on Thursday.
There were 54,000 foreclosures
completed last month, down nearly 7 percent from 58,000 in January, according to CoreLogic. Foreclosures were down about
19 percent from 67,000 a year ago. It was the lowest level since September 2007.
A foreclosure is completed when a home is sold or repossessed by the lender. The timeline to foreclose on distressed
homes has lengthened since the housing market collapsed, leaving about 1.2 million homes in some stage of the foreclosure
process in February.
Still, the foreclosure inventory was down 1.8 percent from January and down 21 percent from
the year before, CoreLogic said. February's inventory accounted for 2.8 percent of all mortgages, down from 3.5 percent
in February 2012.
Prior to the problems in the housing market, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 a month
nationwide between 2000 and 2006. Since the financial crisis escalated in September 2008, there have been about 4.2 million
foreclosures.
Though they still remain elevated, foreclosures have eased as the housing market recovery has gained
traction.
"The drop in delinquencies and foreclosure starts will help support a resurgence in the home purchase
market this year and next," Anand Nallathambi, chief executive of CoreLogic, said in a statement.
Five states
accounted for almost half of all completed foreclosures in the country. Florida led the way with 95,000 foreclosures sold,
followed by California, Michigan, Texas and Georgia.
Florida also had the highest amount of foreclosure inventory,
accounting for 9.9 percent of mortgages. New Jersey, New York, Nevada and Illinois rounded out the top five.
From CNN.com on February 20th.
In these
"zombie foreclosures," borrowers move out after their bank schedules a foreclosure auction only to learn months
or years later that the auction never took place or the bank never transferred the deed. That means the borrower still technically
owns the house and is on the hook for property taxes, fees and homeowners' association dues.
Since the housing bubble burst seven years ago, almost two million properties have started but never
completed the foreclosure process, according to RealtyTrac. While no one knows the exact number, it's estimated that tens
of thousands could be zombie foreclosures.
Many of these homes are in low-income
communities where foreclosures are so difficult to sell that lenders sometimes delay taking possession to save on taxes and
other costs that then stay under the borrower's name.
Those debts can then go unpaid for years
because the borrower is unaware they owe them, further slamming their credit score and making life after
foreclosure even harder.
"The
most frustrating part is that I can't move on," said Rose Nathan, a 37-year-old office manager.
Nathan lost her South Bend, Ind., home in January 2009, after working out a deal with CitiMortgage to voluntarily walk away
in a "deed in lieu of foreclosure."
"On Christmas Eve, the bank called
and told me a sheriff's sale was coming and I had to move out right away," she said. "So that's what I did --
seven days after New Year's."
She sold her belongings and moved to Hawaii.
Nearly two years later, she received a property tax bill from the City of South Bend for $5,000. The bank had never taken
possession of the house.
Citi told her attorney, Judith Fox, that the holdup
was due to a lien on the home that they were never told about. Nathan said she knew of no liens at the time of the transaction.
Upon doing a title search, Fox found no evidence of a lien until well after the bank agreed to the deed-in-lieu deal.
Meanwhile, the unpaid debt has
crushed Nathan's credit score. The deed-in-lieu alone lowered her score by 80 to 120 points, but the unpaid debt meant her
credit kept taking a hit. Eventually her credit card companies cut her off, even though she said she was making her payments.
Her auto loan now carries a 25% rate. Her car insurance premiums have skyrocketed.
She can only afford a one-bedroom apartment where she lives with her three kids. And forget about buying another home. "Nobody
will give me a mortgage," she said.
Citi declined to comment on the case.
Nathan said she has since paid off the lien with the hope that Citi will take the deed on the home.
Mustapha Sesay, a 45 year-old father of two, thought he had lost his Brandywine,
Md., home in 2008. But two years later, a debt collector called telling him he owed $70,000.
The holder of his second mortgage had never forgiven his debt -- even though the lender holding his primary
mortgage had foreclosed on the home.
Typically the second mortgage holder is out
of luck if there isn't enough cash from the foreclosure sale to pay off both the first and second lien, said Cheryl Cassell,
director of the housing counselor network for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. But, depending on state law,
second mortgage holders can sue homeowners to pay off the notes -- even after they lose the home in a foreclosure or the
lender can sell the debt to a collection agencies.
In Sesay's case, the debt collector calls every week or two. He has had little luck
stopping it. "I talk to credit counselors, lawyers," he said.
Sesay would have
been well on the way to credit score recovery. But now, he said, "I could move to Alaska in winter and no one would
lend me ice."
Bill Purdy, a real estate attorney in Soquel, Calif., said
borrowers can't always trust lenders to file foreclosure paperwork properly. In November 2011, when his client Christopher
Warner's Felton, Calif., home was auctioned off, his mortgage debt was fully extinguished -- standard practice based on
California law.
Warner's lender, however, recorded $120,000 on its books as debt
-- the difference between what he owed and what the house sold for -- and gave it to a collection agency.
The debt has lowered Warner's credit score by an additional 100 points, he estimated.
"It nearly put me into bankruptcy," he said. He has hired Purdy to get the debt collectors off his back.
In a $25 billion settlement with the state attorneys general last spring, the nation's
five largest mortgage lenders agreed to inform borrowers of any decision to forgo or delay a foreclosure. But victim's attorneys
said the banks have not been careful about following that policy.
Borrowers can get
credit counseling from community advocacy groups, like those affiliated with NeighborWorks America and NCRC. They can call
the HopeNow Hotline to connect with a counselor near them. The organizations don't charge for their services and they are
experienced in working with borrowers in trouble. 
