Holland
Foreclosure activity for the greater Holland area dipped during 2011 — the first time in at least five years, according to an industry website.
Data released by RealtyTrac.com this morning showed 1,572 properties in Ottawa County were associated with foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — during 2011. That number peaked at 2,269 in 2010 after increasing each year for at least five years running.
RealtyTrac’s numbers show a similar story in Allegan county: 867 properties were associated with foreclosure filings during 2011. The figure peaked at 1,109 in 2010 after increasing for several years.
Ottawa County Register of Deeds Gary Scholten said the figures sync with foreclosure activity handled by his office. The register of deeds office handled 827 sheriff deeds — the product of a completed foreclosure — during 2011. In 2010, his office handled 953 sheriff deeds, and in 2009 they handled 933.
So what’s the reason for the change?
“Who knows?” Scholten said.
Tom Smolinski, a Holland-area Realtor who specializes in short sales — sales in which the bank holding the mortgage agrees to accept a payoff less than the balance due on the loan — said banks aren’t acting as quickly.
“I know banks are giving homeowners longer,” Smolinski said. “There’s a longer period of time before they’re pursuing the foreclosure.”
He also said short sales haven’t gotten any easier and banks aren’t any more willing to pursue them, but “homeowners are realizing that they have other options” besides foreclosure.
Nationally, RealtyTrac reported that 1.45 percent, or one in 69, of U.S. housing units had at least one foreclosure filing during the year, down from 2.23 percent in 2010, 2.21 percent in 2009, and 1.84 percent in 2008.
Total U.S. foreclosure activity and the foreclosure rate in 2011 were both at their lowest annual level since 2007.
RealtyTrac CEO Brandon Moore blamed the drop in foreclosure filings on changes in rules for how foreclosures are conducted and documented.
“Foreclosures were in full delay mode in 2011,” Moore said in a released statement. “We are continuing to see a highly dysfunctional foreclosure process that is inefficiently dealing with delinquent mortgages.”