By AFP | Jun 10, 2010
US foreclosure activity decreases in May: tracker
US foreclosure filings continued to level off in May, decreasing by three percent compared to the previous month, industry tracker RealtyTrac said Thursday.
The filings, which include default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions increased less than one percent compared to May 2009, after the first decrease in four years last month over the same period a year before.
RealtyTrac said foreclosure filings were reported on 322,920 properties in May, affecting one in every 400 US housing units.
Bank repossessions also hit a record monthly high in May for the second month in a row, with lenders repossessing a total of 93,777 US properties during the month -- a one percent increase from the previous month and an increase of 44 percent from May 2009.
The tracker also found that 10 US states accounted for over 70 percent of the national total. California alone accounted for more than 22 percent of the total nationwide.
"The numbers in May continued and confirmed the trends we noticed in April: overall foreclosure activity leveling off while lenders work through the backlog of distressed properties that have built up over the past 20 months," RealtyTrac executive officer James Saccacio said in a statement.
"Lenders appear to be ramping up the pace of completing those forestalled foreclosures even while the inflow of delinquencies into the foreclosure process has slowed."
RealtyTrac bases its analysis on foreclosure documents filed in over 2,200 counties nationwide that account for more than 90 percent of the US population.
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