Foreclosures dropped month-to-month and from last year

By Christopher Quinn

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Foreclosure notices for September dropped to their lowest point this year and to their lowest point for the 13-county metro Atlanta region in 2 years and nine months, according to Equity Depot.

There were 7,324 notices filed, which is the third month this year, including April and June, that the yo-yoing number has been in the 7,000 range. High months have seen more than 10,000 notices, and last month there were 9,953.

The figures puzzled Barry Bramlett, president of the Kennesaw-based numbers crunching firm.

"We’ve tracked them for 20 years and overnight changes aren’t normal," Bramlett said.

"Increases or decreases usually track up or down over time. And this happened nationally, not just in Georgia," he said.

"I’m honestly not sure the number of advertised foreclosures has anything to do with the real number of defaults," Bramlett said.

Banks may be holding off on foreclosures for several reasons. Many big lenders are still working their way through legal problems created by the "robo-signing" crisis, where mortgage documentation was incomplete, inaccurate or forged.

Economists have also blamed lenders' inability to keep up with the amount of work it takes to process foreclosures or on just an unwillingness of banks to complete foreclosures during this flood of unowned houses.

The issue that Bramlett is sure of is that no one working in the industry has seen this kind of housing crisis.

"We’ll just have to see what transpires down the road. I just think it's all uncharted territory with few answers," he said.

Experiencing the biggest drop in foreclosure notices by percentage were Clayton, which fell 36 percent from month to month, followed by Cobb, which was 35 percent lower.

Notices in Henry were down 30 percent, Gwinnett's fell 27 percent, Fulton by 25 percent and DeKalb fell 22 percent.

Foreclosure notices by county

County: August/September

Gwinnett: 2,108/1,530

Fulton: 1,765/1,321

DeKalb: 1,560/1,213

Cobb: 1,181/762

Clayton: 880/564

Cherokee: 405/312

Henry: 584/410

Rockdale: 217/171

Forsyth: 318/243

Douglas: 343/302

Fayette: 153/136