Families in foreclosed homes are getting a holiday reprieve again this year, as government sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with major banks such as Wells Fargo are holding off on foreclosures and evictions until 2012.
Like last year, the Thanksgiving and Christmas moratorium dropped metro Atlanta foreclosure notices in December to one of the lowest monthly totals for the year with 7,454. Only June 2011 was lower at 7,374. That is still more than twice the number of monthly foreclosure notices in the years leading up to the housing crisis.
The total for notices in 2011 dropped to the lowest level since 2008 -- 109,548 in metro Atlanta. There were 127,140 notices last year and 117,107 in 2009.
A notice does not always end up in foreclosure, as the homeowner can work out a deal with the bank, sell the home or find a few other escapes.
Many factors are helping depress the total in 2011 -- from federal regulators requiring more careful paperwork to a push by banks and nonprofits for refinancings, and the effects of the "robo-signing crisis," where lenders stopped foreclosures because forged or illegal real-estate documents were found in many cases.
Still, no U.S. housing market has ever experienced the many pressures and changes like those of today, local experts say, That makes it difficult to interpret what the shifting numbers mean.
"We had this ridiculous amount of foreclosures for all of 2009 and 2010 and it carried into the first quarter of 2011," said Barry Bramlett, the CEO of Equity Depot's Foreclosure Report.
"We are definitely going to be down in the number of properties advertised for foreclosure this year. If the only criteria is that less foreclosures are good, then that is a good thing," he said.
But the dropping number in 2011 means homeowners in shaky situations and ripe for eviction are just being put off to another day, it will slow the process by which the market is clearing itself of bad loans, Bramlett said.
"If your criteria is we are just going to continue stagnant because we won't allow the situation to weed itself out, then it is bad," Bramlett said.
"And all these influences which are influencing us downward are still there. It makes you think it is not going to change quickly."
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