Total Petitions At Lowest Level Since January 2015
BOSTON, August 29, 2017 – Foreclosure petitions in July are down 33.8 percent compared to last year, according to a new report from The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.
A total of 683 petitions were filed in July, compared to 1,032 in July 2016. Petitions are the first entry in the public record in the foreclosure process, when lenders file a notice of intention to foreclose with the Land Court.
Year to date, the state has seen 6,466 total petitions filed, down 15.5 percent from the 7,648 filed over the first seven months of 2016.
“We’ve seen some impressive year-over-year drops in petitions recently as the backlog of foreclosures gets cleared up, but this is among the biggest,” said Timothy Warren, CEO of The Warren Group. “The July 2017 total is the lowest of any month since January of 2015.”
Statewide there were 667 foreclosure auctions scheduled in July, a decrease of 18.8 percent from July 2016, when there were 821 auctions scheduled. An auction is scheduled through legal advertising in local newspapers with the lender giving the time, date and address for the auction to take place.
Year to date, the state had 4,464 total auctions, down 18.4 percent from the 5,470 over the same period in 2016.
There were 413 foreclosure deeds recorded in July, a 26.5 percent decrease from the 562 recorded in July 2016. These deeds represent completed foreclosures, when lenders put the change in ownership of the foreclosed property in the public record at registries of deeds.
Year to date, the state filed 3,487 total deeds, up 1.37 percent from the 3,440 filed over the same period in 2016.