The Number of Austin Foreclosures Continues to Drop

For homeowners around the country, facing foreclosure became an unfortunate reality during the recession. While a number of homeowners have been forced into foreclosure on their homes in Austin, the good news is that RealityTrac Inc. has determined that foreclosures in Texas were actually down 7% during the month of August.

For the month of August, the state recorded a total of 11,261 default, bank repossession and auction notices. While this number may sound a bit disheartening, it is actually 6.8% less than the numbers that were posted in July. In fact, during July, these sort of filings were occurring at the rate of one out of every 838 households throughout the state, which put Texas as the 27th highest state in the country in terms of auctions, defaults and foreclosures.

While the August 2009 figures are still up 4% when compared to the same time last year, the fact that foreclosures are slowing down is certainly a positive indication of an economy that is ready to start the process of recovery.

On the national scale, the total number of foreclosures went down by less than 1% when compared to July, with the total number reported being 358,471. When compared to August of last year, however, the foreclosures actually went up by 18%. In all, this amounts to about one in every 357 households filing for foreclosure in August. More than half of the filings occurring across the country have originated from just four states:  Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada.

"The August report demonstrates that there is still an ample supply of properties filling the foreclosure pipeline even while the outflow of bank-owned REO properties onto the resale market is being more carefully regulated,” said James Saccacio, who is the chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, in a Biz Journals article. “After hitting a high for the year in July, REOs dropped 13 percent in August, but we also saw a record high number of properties either entering default or being scheduled for a public foreclosure auction for the first time.”