New York comptroller says high home foreclosure level persists

New York state still has high rates of foreclosures.

Foreclosure cases also rose sharply in Greene County (326 cases, up 105 percent), Warren County (389 cases, up 36 percent), Columbia County (313 cases, up 37 percent) and Washington County (393 cases, up 42 percent).

The report, released Monday by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, shows that areas immediately outside of New York City have the greatest number of pending foreclosures in the state. In Lewis County, the 51 pending foreclosures represented at 6.3 percent increase, while in St. Lawrence County, 174 homes were in foreclosure at the start of 2015, up 13 percent from the previous year.

Long Island’s housing distress worsened even as New York City’s fortunes improved, with 0.86 percent of all city homes in foreclosure, a year-over-year decline of 5.1 percent.

Some regions of the state are experiencing higher pending foreclosure rates than others. “This large pool of properties in legal limbo weighs on local governments’ vitality in many ways, including reducing property values, eroding tax bases and propagating blight”. The next four downstate counties with the highest foreclosure rates are Orange, Sullivan, Ulster and Dutchess.

Most other regions saw a slower increase in their pending caseload. The region had just 2,322 pending foreclosures at the beginning of 2013. New York’s total of 9,981 completed foreclosures for the 12-month period ending June 30, 2015, was sixth among judicial foreclosure states and 16th overall. The largest share came from Broome County, which had 694 pending cases. “In the rest of the state, lis pendens filings grew by only 1.3% from 2013 to 2014, while notices of sale grew by 78%”. But as they fall further behind on their mortgage, the chances of them keeping the home become more unrealistic.

Earlier this year, while speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Secondary Market Conference in New York City, Benjamin Lawsky, the now-former Superintendentof the New York Department of Financial Services, said that the state’s “foreclosure process is broken and badly in need of change”. In 2009, there were abut 47,600 cases filed statewide.

“Under the leadership of Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman, the Judiciary is committed to prioritizing these important cases, and continues to dedicate scarce resources to expediting the foreclosure settlement process while also preserving the rights of all parties throughout the proceedings”, Prudenti wrote in the report.