1 out of 710 Long Island households in foreclosure

One out of every 710 households on Long Island received some sort of foreclosure-related filing in August, RealtyTrac reported.

In Nassau, it was one out of every 890 households, including rentals, and in Suffolk, it was one out of every 607, data show.

Foreclosure-related filings are lis pendens, which notifies homeowners of foreclosure proceedings; auction notices; and bank seizures of homes.

A year ago, one out of every 647 Long Island households got a filing, RealtyTrac records show. That broke down to one out of every 671 households in Nassau and 627 households in Suffolk.

But RealtyTrac officials and other experts in the property data warn that one month's numbers should not be taken too seriously. The accuracy of such data depends on several factors, from who collects them to whether filings are recorded late in county offices, which then means they end up in the next month’s numbers.

For example, in 2007, when it was clear the housing crisis was in full swing, RealtyTrac reported only 60 filings in June for Suffolk and only 44 in the following month, when the range for the county that year had been 330 to more than 1,600.

The company said its local contractor had problems getting data, but that royally skewed comparisons on filings the following year. In June 2008, the 780 filings in Suffolk were supposedly a 1,200 percent increase from the 60 a year ago.

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