US home foreclosures hit a new record in 2010, as millions of families faced a disastrous combination of joblessness, falling wages, and plunging home values. The latest foreclosure figures, released Thursday by Realtytrac.com, comes amidst a bout of negative economic statistics that underscore the depth of the social crisis.
Approximately 2.8 million properties had foreclosure actions taken against them in 2010, about 1 in 45 US households in all and an increase of 2 percent over 2009. The number of properties repossessed by banks jumped 14 percent, to over one million.
The new record comes in spite of an 11 percent curtailment of foreclosure filings and evictions in the fourth quarter. This short-term decline resulted from voluntary moratoriums put in place by some banks after it came to light that mortgage lenders were systematically falsifying documentation in order to speed Americans out of their homes. In the immediate aftermath of the scandal the Obama administration ruled out any punishment or investigation of the banks, and foreclosure processing accelerated.
Experts say the worst is yet to come. “The 2010 numbers came out significantly lower than we expected as a result of the mortgage documentation scandal,” said Daren Blomquist, Director of Marketing Communications for Realtytrac, in a telephone interview. “But those foreclosures which were halted—about a quarter million—will simply be pushed to next year.”
Realtytrac was already projecting record levels of foreclosures next year before the mortgage scandal, and now estimates that foreclosure levels could be between 10 percent and 20 percent higher in 2011 than in 2010.