Efforts to Prevent Foreclosures Unable to Hold Back Increases

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Efforts to Prevent Foreclosures Unable to Hold Back Increases

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Several initiatives to prevent foreclosures have been launched by the U.S. government in the past few years. However, certain areas of the country continue to post higher foreclosure rates at the start of 2011. In Texas, the housing market crisis did not hit as bad, but some parts of the state continue to post higher numbers this year.

Foreclosed homes in El Paso, in Dallas-Fort Worth and in other key markets of Texas remained manageable, but foreclosure rates did go up in some local areas in February, according to the latest figures presented by CoreLogic. In February 2011, the residential foreclosure rate of Dallas jumped compared with one year ago, although mortgage delinquencies did post a decline from February 2010.

During the month, reports concerning Texas foreclosures provided mixed data for each local market. In Dallas, the rate was 1.55%, up from the February 2010 foreclosure rate of 1.47%. In terms of the number of homeowners who are behind in their loan payments for at least three months, the figure was pegged at 5.24%. The figure represented a decline from one year ago when the delinquency rate was over 6%. Those who are at least 90 days late in their mortgage payments are considered the most at risk in losing their properties to foreclosure.

Despite the rise in Dallas' foreclosure rate, it was still less than 50% of the national level as more homeowners nationally failed to prevent foreclosures in February. In terms of delinquency, the national rate for the month was 7.79%. Meanwhile, Clear Capital provided data showing that 32.7% of houses that were for sale in Dallas-Fort Worth during the first three months of the year were foreclosed.

Although that percentage of home foreclosures for sale against the full for-sale residential inventory seemed considerable, Dallas remained way behind hard-hit metro areas like Las Vegas and Orlando; with the former having 53.7% of its for-sale residential inventory for February accounted for by foreclosures, while Orlando had 49.9%. At the state level, Houston's for-sale foreclosure percentage was higher than Dallas at 37.8%. Clear Capital also ranked Dallas-Fort Worth as the fourth best-performing major housing market in the whole U.S. during the month.

The ranking was mainly based on the fact that residential prices in the metro area did not decline as much as in other markets during the first quarter. Most analysts expect Dallas and Fort Worth to be able to prevent foreclosures in the coming months better than most metropolitan regions in the U.S.