LI foreclosure activity lowest since 2008
Foreclosure activity on Long Island last month was the lowest since December 2008, a new report said.
There were 540 overall filings in April, a drop of 21.5 percent from March and 62 percent from a year earlier, according to RealtyTrac, an online market for foreclosures.
In December 2008, there were 360 filings, data show. At that time, mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and most major lenders had suspended work on foreclosure cases during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays and even into January 2009.
On average, it now takes 924 days in New York State for a home to be foreclosed -- the longest time in the land, RealtyTrac said. Here, judges must agree to each foreclosure, and by the first quarter of this year, the state had surpassed New Jersey's 908 days, the report said. The average for New York was 263 days during the first quarter of 2007, before the subprime mortgage market imploded, data show.
Last month in Suffolk, foreclosure-related filings sank 45 percent from the previous month and 80 percent from a year earlier, data show. In Nassau, the report said, filings increased 3 percent from March but fell 25 percent from a year earlier.
The local lull in activity was part of a 40-month low nationwide, RealtyTrac said.
At work are two trends. First, there have been better attempts by lenders to negotiate before initiating foreclosures; this can take more than a year. Second, lenders are having to get papers in order and fight legal and judicial challenges after scandals over their foreclosure practices.
Just Tuesday, Carmen Thomas and husband John got a letter from their lender offering a 2 percent interest rate on their remaining $178,000 debt. They currently pay 6.2 percent rate.
The offer for a trial period on the new loan terms came after three years of the couple submitting paperwork and appealing the lender's denial of a loan modification, said Carmen Thomas, a printer whose finances fell apart when her husband lost his jobs six years ago and she lost clients in the poor economy.
She said she's not celebrating the new loan deal yet, "not until I actually have the whole thing done and I have a document in front of me saying they're not going to foreclose."
Lenders say it's expensive to go through a long foreclosure process only to end up with properties they must repair and maintain.
"The first delay occurs between delinquency and foreclosure, when lenders and servicers are . . . waiting longer to allow for loan modifications, short sales and possibly other disposition alternatives," said James J. Saccacio, RealtyTrac's chief executive. "The second delay occurs after foreclosure has started, when lenders are taking much longer than they were just a few years ago to complete the process."
