More Pennsylvanians losing homes
HARRISBURG - The number of Pennsylvania homeowners falling behind on mortgage payments and the number of homes seized by banks jumped steeply in August.
HARRISBURG - The number of Pennsylvania homeowners falling behind on mortgage payments and the number of homes seized by banks jumped steeply in August.
New figures out yesterday from foreclosure-listing firm RealtyTrac Inc. showed 6,500 Pennsylvania homes received at least one foreclosure filing in August, while banks seized 2,300 properties.
That's up from 5,100 foreclosure filings and 1,500 seizures in July. Seizures and filings also rose nationally from July to August, but by much smaller margins.
Pennsylvania's foreclosure rate in August was just under half the national rate, with approximately one in every 840 homes receiving a foreclosure filing.
However, the gap is narrowing, a sign that Pennsylvania's situation is worsening while the nation's crisis levels off. A year ago, the state's foreclosure rate was nearly one-third the national rate.
Nationally, banks have been stepping up repossessions to clear out their backlog of bad loans with an eye on eventually putting the foreclosed properties on the market, but they can't afford to simply dump the properties on the market.
Concerns are growing that the housing-market recovery could stumble amid stubbornly high unemployment, a sluggish economy and faltering consumer confidence. U.S. home sales have collapsed since federal homebuyer tax credits expired in April.
That's one reason fewer than one-third of homes repossessed by lenders are on the market, said Rick Sharga, a senior vice president at RealtyTrac.
"These (properties) are going to come to market, but very slowly because nobody wants to overwhelm a soft buyer's market with too much distressed inventory for fear of what it would do for house prices," he said.
As a result, lenders are putting off initiating the foreclosure process on homeowners who have missed payments, letting borrowers stay in their homes longer.
