Foreclosures fall, but Atlanta still second in nation

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Both regions saw improvement: Atlanta had 21 percent fewer foreclosures than the previous year, while Tampa saw a 15 percent decrease.

The tsunami of foreclosures was a crucial – and painful – part of the housing crisis. As housing prices spiraled down and layoffs surged to record levels, many homeowners fell behind in their payments and lost their homes.

Those losses dragged down home values around them, so it wasn’t just the foreclosed households whose finances were hurt.

Many of those – at least in the early waves of foreclosure – were borrowers who had been given loans they really could not afford or others who were surprised to find their mortgage payments soaring after a few years of a very low “teaser” rate.

But as unemployment rocketed to the double-digits, hundreds of thousands of homes were eventually lost.

Decline in foreclosures is a sign that the market is slowly heading back toward health.

But as CoreLogic’s report shows, the backwash has continued and there are still many neighborhoods where foreclosures are distorting the market.

Some promising news: The rate of serious delinquencies and foreclosures in Atlanta was dramatically below Tampa in August, CoreLogic said.