Wisconsin foreclosures up just 1 percent from last year
Real Estate News from the We Buy Houses Team
Foreclosures in Wisconsin rose just 1.2 percent in August, compared with the same month last year, suggesting a slowdown in the rising rate of foreclosure filings.
Wisconsin’s number of foreclosures dropped the state in the national rankings from to 30th from 29th in July, according to RealtyTrac, a national database of foreclosure and bank-owned properties.
The number of homes in some stage of foreclosure in August increased to 2,226, according to RealtyTrac. That means one in every 1,138 homes in the state was facing some kind of foreclosure.
Nationally, 303,879 homes faced foreclosure in August, up 11.7 percent from July and up 26.7 percent from August 2007.
“In August, the total number of U.S. properties that received foreclosure filings as well as the national foreclosure rate were both the highest we’ve seen in any month since we began issuing our report in January 2005; however, the annual increase of 27 percent was actually substantially lower than in previous months this year, when it was hovering around 50 to 65 percent,” said James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac.
Saccacio said that new legislation passed in several states designed to give homeowners more time before foreclosure proceedings are initiated may be contributing to the slowdown in the increase in default and auction activity.
RealtyTrac publishes one of the largest national databases of foreclosure and bank-owned properties with more than 1.5 million properties from some 2,200 counties across the country.