Mixed foreclosure report: up year to year, down month to month

RealtyTrac released foreclosure numbers that showed Florida, like the rest of the country, suffers from unusually high foreclosures. Year to year, foreclosures in Florida have doubled. And then some.

Gee, didn't see that coming.

One snippet of possible encouraging news: RealtyTrac said foreclosures appear to have peaked around August, when banks started pulling back from the housing market en masse.

Here's more reading from Reuters.

I'll repeat: RealtyTrac and its cohorts exaggerate "foreclosures" in two ways.

1. They count what are essentially missed mortgage payments, leaving the misleading impression that such defaults necessarily lead to home confiscation. 2. Some homes are hit with more then one foreclosure filing, leading to massive double counting.

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Comments

[John]

Agree 100%

They sell foreclosure information on thier web site, so the more hysteria they can generate, the better. It's kind of sad how the press seems to be falling for this and using RT press releases as a credible source.

[Sandra]

If this is common knowledge, why are the numbers from RealtyTrac even given print space?

[Jonathan Roy]

If you'd like to report some county-specific figures, you could check the Lis Pendens filed in the county's web site, or look at the foreclosure auction section to see how many have gone up the past month (and how many of those are cancelled vs actually get sold).