Foreclosures down in Galveston County

Foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — fell in Texas, where 10,148 properties were reported in August, a 4 percent decrease from July and 29 percent below the level reported for August 2010, according to the latest RealtyTrac® U.S. Foreclosure Market Report.

Texas had the 24th highest rate in the country with one in every 958 housing units with a foreclosure filing in August.

California continues to lead the nation in terms of total properties with foreclosure filings by a large margin, reporting 59,383 properties with a foreclosure filing. Second ranked Florida reported 23,569 properties with foreclosure filings during the month. Moving up to third place was Michigan, where 13,016 properties with foreclosure filings were reported. Illinois jumped a spot to the fourth highest total, reporting 12,493 properties with foreclosure filings while Georgia dropped two spots and took fifth place, tallying 11,743 properties with foreclosure filings.

The remaining states that make up the nation’s top 10 in August include Arizona (11,081), Texas (10,148), Ohio (9,841), Nevada (9,677) and Colorado (4,933). The top 10 accounted for 73 percent of the nation’s total foreclosure activity for the month.

Kaufman County posts top foreclosure rate in the state for August
One in every 268 housing units in Kaufman County received a foreclosure filing in August — 2.1 times the national average and 3.6 times the state average — the highest foreclosure rate of all Texas counties for the month. Bastrop County had the second highest rate of one in every 391 housing units with a foreclosure filing during the month — 1.5 times the national average and 2.5 times the state average. Rockwall County had the third highest rate of one in every 394 housing units with a foreclosure filing during the month — 1.5 times the national average and 2.4 times the state average.

Harris County led the state in foreclosure activity, reporting 2,485 properties with foreclosure filings for the month. Dallas County was second highest, reporting 1,403 properties with foreclosure filings. Tarrant County was third, reporting 972 properties with foreclosure filings. Fourth highest was Bexar County, recording 863 properties with foreclosure filings. Travis County was fifth tallying 373 properties with a foreclosure filing.

State the nation’s seventh largest contributor to total foreclosure activity in August
Texas accounted for 4 percent of the 228,098 properties with foreclosure filings reported nationwide in August. Total U.S. activity increased by more than 7 percent from July, but was down nearly 33 percent from the level reported in August 2010. One in every 570 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing during the month.

“The big increase in new foreclosure actions may be a signal that lenders are starting to push through some of the foreclosures delayed by robo-signing and other documentation problems,” said James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “It also foreshadows more bank repossessions in the coming months as these new foreclosures make their way through the process.”

The RealtyTrac U.S. Foreclosure Market Report provides a count of the total number of properties with at least one foreclosure filing entered into the RealtyTrac database during the month — broken out by type of filing by state, county and metropolitan statistical area. Some foreclosure filings entered into the database during the month may have been recorded in previous months. Data is collected from more than 2,200 counties nationwide, and those counties account for more than 90 percent of the U.S. population. RealtyTrac’s report incorporates documents filed in all three phases of foreclosure: Default — Notice of Default (NOD) and Lis Pendens (LIS); Auction — Notice of Trustee Sale and Notice of Foreclosure Sale (NTS and NFS); and Real Estate Owned, or REO properties (that have been foreclosed on and repurchased by a bank). If more than one foreclosure document is received for a property during the month, only the most recent filing is counted in the report. The report also checks if the same type of document was filed against a property in a previous month. If so, and if that previous filing occurred within the estimated foreclosure timeframe for the state the property is in, the report does not count the property in the current month.