Talk about the housing dominoes now falling at a fast pace. Banks repossessed a record number of U.S. homes in the Q2 2010, but slowed new foreclosure notices.

• There is a six-fold increase in homes starting the foreclosure process, and …
• 1 in 78 homes received at least one foreclosure filing in the 1st-half 2010 and ….
• Nearly 1 Million Homes Foreclosed on in 2010!

And the only reason for any degree of slowing down the foreclosure process is so that the banks can manage distressed properties on the market, according to real estate data company RealtyTrac.

The Root Problems: Job losses and wage cuts persist, making a sustained U.S. housing recovery elusive, and providing no relief to stemming foreclosures.

Housing By The Numbers:

• Banks took control of 269,962 properties in the second quarter 2010, up 5 percent from the prior quarter and a 38 percent spike from the second quarter of last year.
• Repossessions will likely top 1 million this year.
• The housing sector still sits on over 5 million seriously delinquent loans that, odds are, will at some point go into foreclosure.

Some Historical Perspective:

• In 2005, the last “normal” year in housing,  about 530,000 households got a foreclosure notice and banks took over a comparatively minuscule 100,000 houses.
• This year more than 3 million households are likely to get at least one foreclosure filing, which includes notice of default, scheduled auction and repossession.
• In the first half of the year, foreclosure filings were made on 1.65 million properties. That was down 5 percent from the last half of 2009 but up 8 percent from the first half of last year.
• One in every 78 households got at least one foreclosure filing in the first six months of this year.

MARYLAND UPDATE >> The number of foreclosure filings in Maryland more than doubled in June 2010, while the state’s foreclosure rate also ranked 13th overall for the first half of 2010.

• Maryland’s 6,304 foreclosure filings in June 2010 was nearly a 104 percent increase from the same month last year.

• From January to June 2010, Maryland’s 28,293 filings was a 56.2 percent increase from the same period a year earlier.

• That comes out to 1.2 percent of Maryland homes receiving a foreclosure filing during the six-month stretch.

Tags: 2010, foreclosures

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