Area foreclosures climb 141% over 2009 levels 

Posted: 9:03 pm Thu, April 29, 2010
By Ben Mook
Daily Record Asst. Business Editor

Foreclosures in the Baltimore region skyrocketed by 141 percent in the first quarter over the same period last year, but the worst may be over.

Even though foreclosures may have peaked here, levels should remain high for the rest of the year, said a spokesman for RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listings company that produced the statistics.

“There was a big ramp up in the numbers in the fourth quarter for Baltimore,” said RealtyTrac spokesman Daren Blomquist. “And, the decline in the first quarter is not indicative that the foreclosures have turned a corner. They may have hit a plateau but we don’t expect to see the numbers all of a sudden plummet and take a turn downward in 2010.”

RealtyTrac’s figures showed that the number of foreclosures in the region declined by about 1 percent from the fourth quarter of 2009. But filings that quarter were the highest on record here.

In the first quarter of 2010, a total of 932,234 households, or one of every 138 housing units in the nation was at some point in the foreclosure process, according to RealtyTrac.

The Baltimore-Towson area was below the national average, but still with 6,515 filings had one of every 170 housing units in the foreclosure process in the first quarter.

The U.S. Census Bureau defines the Baltimore-Towson Metropolitan Statistical Area as Baltimore City and Anne Arundel, Baltimore, Carroll, Harford, Howard and Queen Anne’s counties.

Blomquist noted that the bulk of the filings making up the 141 percent increase were for homes that are already in the foreclosure process. Notices of new filings for the beginning of the year were up only 2 percent compared to the previous year.

“That is good news somewhat,” he said. “You’re not filling the pipeline up with a huge increase of new properties entering the foreclosure process.”

Unlike the increases in the Baltimore region, the Washington suburbs, the District itself and Northern Virginia recorded foreclosure declines in the first quarter compared to the previous year. That area had 13,819 filings in the first quarter, a 13 percent decline from the end of 2009 and a 7 percent decline from the first quarter of 2009.

“D.C. is a different kind of animal,” Blomquist said. “We didn’t see the big increases there. It’s probably because the area got hit hard early on and now it’s showing a bit of a decrease.”

The Hagerstown area saw double-digit increases in filings compared to the first quarter of 2009. The area, which includes Martinsburg, W.Va., had 456 foreclosure filings, or one of every 251 households. This was an almost 63 percent increase compared to a year ago. But it was a 7 percent decline from the number of filings in the fourth quarter of 2009.