Suspended home foreclosures are on the rise in the Bay Area during the pandemic.
The San Jose Mercury News, citing data from Attom, reported a 90% increase in foreclosure filings in the five-county region in the first half of 2021 compared to the same period in 2021. We have reached 1,700.
The number of Bay Area foreclosure applications per 1,419 residential units is below pre-pandemic levels and below the national average. Foreclosures across the United States increased 153% over the same period, with about 165,000 homes, or 1 in 854 homes affected.
Foreclosures are likely to continue rising in the coming months, but the surge signals a return to normalcy rather than an upcoming housing crash, real estate experts say. .
Rick Sharga, Executive Vice President of Market Intelligence at ATTOM Data Solutions, told Mercury News: “It is unlikely that there will be enough foreclosed homes to enter the market to have a significant impact on prices.”
Shaga said the number of foreclosures has been moderated by forbearance plans offered by the federal government and private lenders, allowing struggling homeowners to temporarily suspend mortgage payments during the coronavirus pandemic. It can be stopped.
A billion dollar statewide mortgage relief program available to 13,000 Bay Area homes has also helped thousands of borrowers.
With the moratorium on federally secured mortgages ending in July 2021, many banks have resumed private loan foreclosures.
As such, some homeowners who defaulted on their payments before the pandemic or failed to take full advantage of emergency programs have lost their homes.
Contra Costa County had the highest foreclosure filing rate in the region this year, at 0.12% of all homes, or 1 in 833. Alameda County followed with 0.08%, Santa Clara County with 0.06%, and San Mateo County with 0.05%. In percent, San Francisco County has 0.04 percent.
Sharga expects foreclosures to continue to rise and return to pre-pandemic levels across the Bay Area and across the country by the middle of next year. If inflation and rising interest rates trigger a recession, foreclosures “could return to slightly higher levels than normal, a little sooner,” he said.
Despite an increase in foreclosures, the 1,707 filings in the Central Bay Area this year are 17% lower than in the same period in 2019 before the pandemic and half the 4,555 in the first half of 2016, when foreclosures still existed. It is less than. Falling out of their Great Recession.
– Dana Bartholomew