Harris County foreclosures on pace to top 2007 total

Houston Foreclosure & Real Estate News

By PURVA PATEL

Foreclosures were up 16 percent for the first six months of the year in Harris County, putting the county on pace to beat last year.

Foreclosure sales, which take place the first Tuesday of the month at the courthouse, totaled 6,683 for the first six months of 2008, up from, 5,739 during the same period last year, according to data from The Woodlands-based Foreclosure Information & Listing Service.

"The only difference from last year is the rate of incline is dropping some," said Ralph Murdock, owner of the service. "I think we're starting to moderate a bit, but we'll still outnumber last year."

Postings for properties whose owners have become delinquent on their mortgages but have not yet been foreclosed on jumped 18 percent during the same period.

For all of 2007, foreclosures jumped 25 percent from 2006 in Harris County.

Fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis, fraud and overextended borrowers continue to trouble the Houston area, experts said.

Still, foreclosures slipped in June to 1,034, from 1,119 during the same month last year, indicating the rate of foreclosures may be moderating.

That may be because lenders are working more with strapped borrowers to stave off foreclosure, Murdock said.

But, he noted, foreclosures sales in August will likely jump because July will be a five-week month, giving lenders an extra week to foreclose.

Barton Smith, director of the Institute for Regional Forecasting at the University of Houston, expects foreclosures to peak sometime this summer.

"The discouraging part is foreclosures aren't going to drop dramatically," he said.

He worries that many Houston-area foreclosures are being purchased by inexperienced investors who may not have the wherewithal to maintain the properties they buy.

"There's a lot of fly-by-night investors trying to pick properties up cheap, but they themselves don't have staying power," he said. "So we're quite concerned that we're unloading these foreclosure properties only to become foreclosed again."

 

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