The Collaborative Knowledge Article and Video Project about Buying and Selling a Home. With your writings, edits and uploads we can help people successfully complete what is probably the largest transaction in their lives, and avoid making costly mistakes. Both agents and consumers, we need your help to build this free resource.
Foreclosures Up 75% In 2007
By Dan Handle, 29 Jan 10:55
Defaults are way up for the year, with once red-hot Sun-Belt markets reporting the worst losses.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The number of foreclosures soared in 2007, with 405,000 households losing their home, according to a report released Tuesday. That's up 51 percent from the 268,532 homes that were repossessed in 2006.
Total foreclosure filings soared 97% in December alone compared with December of 2006, according to RealtyTrac, an online seller of foreclosure properties. For the year, total filings - which include default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions - grew 75%.
More than 1 percent of all U.S. households were in some stage of foreclosure during 2007, up from 0.58 percent the year before.
"There are parts of the country where we're seeing many more bank repossessions," said Rick Sharga, a spokesman for RealtyTrac. "People are flat out losing their homes."
In California alone, nearly 66,000 people lost their homes last year. In Michigan, 47,000 families went through foreclosure. Also hard hit was Nevada, where 10,0000 people had their homes repossessed, a per-capita rate more than twice as high as California.
California had a total of 250,000 foreclosure filings, the highest number of of any state. Florida was second with more than 165,000 total filings.
Other hard-hit states include Michigan, which has been battered by job losses in the auto industry and had over 87,000 filings, Ohio, with m
Tags: foreclosure housing market