Metro foreclosure notices holding steady

Foreclosure notices in metro Atlanta during May held steady, avoiding both the longed-for decline and a feared second wave of rising numbers.

“Things are very consistent right now,” said Barry Bramlett, the CEO of Equity Depot, the Kennesaw-based real estate analysis firm that gathers the data.

The raw numbers of foreclosures were up -- 9,539 to April’s 7,036 -- in the 13-county area, but May was one of the five-week counting periods that fall once a quarter, rather than a four-week count, so the rise was expected.

Foreclosure notices do not necessarily end in repossessions; they are an initial legal step in the process. Lenders may fail to proceed or move quickly, as some overwhelmed banks have slowed the process. Also, lenders can work with borrowers to find a settlement or write down loans.

Banks slowed foreclosures at Christmas and late in 2011 and early 2012 as they settled the “robo-signing” scandal with the federal government. Some lenders had used illegal or forged documents to foreclose on homeowners. Now that the settlement has been signed, some in the industry believe there is a backlogged wave of foreclosures waiting to be tipped back into the active market.

Bramlett said there is no indication of those predictions coming true in May’s figures, which are nearly the same as for May 2011.

“One might conclude there is some control of the flow being referred to default firms for foreclosure,” he said.

The number of notices has trended down slowly from the peak in 2010 -- the top was 13,130 notices in August of that year. Though they have fallen, foreclosure notices are still double what they were during a healthy economic year.

Those in the real estate industry are anxiously waiting to see if foreclosure notices will follow some of the hints of improvements in the housing market. Sales of homes were up more than 11 percent between 2010 and 2011, and early indications show 2012 sales started strong.

Delinquencies -- when a homeowner defaults on a loan -- are falling, as are the numbers of unemployed in Georgia.

However, home prices remain depressed in the metro area, held down in part because of the high number of foreclosures still on the market.

Foreclosure notices

County              May 2012            Monthly avg. 2012

Cherokee                385                                 343

Clayton                   839                                 735

Cobb                    1,059                                  933

DeKalb                1,483                               1,298

Douglas                  367                                  308

Fayette                   142                                   127

Forsyth                  252                                   223

Fulton                  1,631                              1,488

Gwinnett            2,058                              1,704