Orange County Foreclosure Rates Tumble

The number of homes slipping toward foreclosure dropped by 2.9 percent in Orange County during the second quarter of 2012 compared to the same period last year, a real estate information service reported today.

Locally, default notices were sent to 3,599 homeowners, down 2.9 percent from the 2011 second-quarter total of 3,705, according to San Diego-based DataQuick.

That declining rate of foreclosures is slightly less than in Los Angeles County, which was harder hit the housing market crash to begin with. Los Angeles County saw a 6.1 percent drop in foreclosures in the second quarter of 2012. Statewide, default notices were sent to 54,615 homeowners in the second quarter of the year, DataQuick reported. That was a 2.9 percent drop from the previous quarter's 56,258 notices and down 3.6 percent from the second quarter in 2011, when 56,633 default notices were sent.

``The foreclosure process has always been the sanitation department of the housing sector,'' said John Walsh, DataQuick president. ``It's where financial distress is processed. The question is whether these lower (default notice) numbers mean that there's less distress to process, or if we're just seeing distress get processed at a slower pace.''

Default notices do not always lead to a home foreclosure, according to DataQuick. Some homeowners emerge from the foreclosure process by bringing their payments current, refinancing or selling the home.

TELL US WHAT YOU THINK IN  THE COMMENTS

Is the local housing market climbing it's way out of the hole, or are there still too many foreclosures to looming to bog down the market a while longer?

- City News Service