Residential foreclosures in the Pittsburgh region have dropped two consecutive months compared with a year ago, according to a report issued Wednesday.
Foreclosures filings fell to 396 homes in August, a drop of 20.3 percent, compared with 497 in August 2007, said RealStats, a South Side-based real estate information company.
That decline followed a 29.1 percent drop in foreclosures in July in Allegheny, Beaver, Butler, Washington and Westmoreland counties, said Daniel Murrer, vice president of RealSTATs.
Murrer said those figures could signal that the region may see fewer foreclosures for the entire year versus a year ago, he said.
"This is good news for the region in today's sea of bad news," said Murrer. "With another drop expected in September, we'll have a full (three months) of year-over-year fewer foreclosures."
Even with the latest monthly decline, foreclosures for the year from January through August are still running at a record pace for the region, but only slightly.
The 3,220 foreclosures for the eighth-month period are only 11 more than the record 3,209 set in the comparable period of 2007, according to RealStats figures.
Murrer cautioned that this August had two fewer business days than August 2007, which could have affected the number of foreclosures filed. RealStats tracks housing statistics using public deed records, and in the case of foreclosures, there were two fewer days for banks, school districts and municipalities to record their foreclosures, he said.
In August, RealStats said there were 219 foreclosures in Allegheny County, a decline of 38.1 percent from August 2007. Beaver County had 33, declining 23.3 percent, and Westmoreland County had 46, a decline of 14.6 percent.
Butler County had 30 foreclosures, an increase of 76.5 percent, and Washington County had 68, up 134.5 percent.
Maryellen Hayden, head organizer for Acorn (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) in Western Pennsylvania, said her group is seeing more people asking for help to avoid foreclosures.
"This may show that the work of all the counseling agencies working on this problem may be bearing fruit," she said.
No comments:
Post a Comment