There were 8,845 foreclosure notices in the metro Atlanta area in October, up 16 percent from September's 7,634, according to Equity Depot of Kennesaw.
That follows the up-and-down movement of the notices over the last seven months and reflects what is going on in the economy, said Barry Bramlett, the president of the number crunching firm.
Foreclosure notices are the first step in the process but do not always lead to a repossession. Property buyers can avoid foreclosure by paying loans or negotiating new deals with banks or lenders.
Bramlett said some of the businesses that one might expect a slow economy to affect are showing strains.
One example that showed up in Equity Depot's numbers were notices for a $175 million blanket loan that secures 19 separate Jameson Inns in Georgia. The W Hotel in Buckhead on Peachtree Street has been advertised for several months on a $36.5 million deed, Bramlett said.
"The economic affect on [hotels and motels], gas stations, truck stops, et cetera is very evident. Don’t expect much of this to change until economic conditions do," he said.
Among residential properties, about 70 percent of notices have run in a prior period, the numbers say.
"This indicates serious delinquencies remain very high," Bramlett said.
"There’s no way to know how many new properties are becoming delinquent based on foreclosure notices here," he said. "It may mean that lenders are simply running notices on the most serious delinquencies. I know [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] had instituted some one-year moratoriums for the unemployed. There may be too many factors to really know anymore. Delinquency rates on all mortgages, based on Mortgage Bankers Association figures, have minimally come down this year but are still very, very high."
During good years in metro Atlanta, there were between 2,000 and 3,000 notices a month. They hit a peak in November of 2010 with 13,834, and were above 10,000 for the first three months of this year.
12,000 notices down to date compared to last year. Seems to have hit a plateau at current levels.
Year over year, foreclosures are down 12,154 from totals of 103,603 in 2010 to 91,449 through September.
The lowest number of foreclosures in October in the 13-county metro region was Fayette County, with 135. The highest was Gwinnett, with 1,889, followed by Fulton, with 1,632, DeKalb with 1,377, Cobb with 977, Clayton with 750, Henry with 527, Cherokee with 363, Douglas with 315, Forsyth with 256, Hall with 252, Rockdale with 217, and Bartow with 155.
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