Also, the reason for decline is that banks and mortgage servicers have no incentive to file foreclosure on delinquent borrowers. They don’t want the house back. They tell is in the numbers of seriously delinquent borrowers. Which continues to grow. Its all in the cashflow.
Just heard that here in Massachusetts they had 9,000 foreclosures last year but that a recent Land Court rulling that banks actually had to produce original docs etc (I guess they figured that these “No Doc” loans didn’t need docs to foreclose :-))had slowed thing down.
They did say there were almost 60,000 bottled up in either foreclosure or 90 days late and who knows how many more in the extend and pretend files.