During June in Alameda County, 735 homeowners received a notice of default, a 51.6 percent decrease from a year ago and a 5.8 percent decrease from May. Another 385 homes became bank-owned properties, a 44 percent decline from a year ago and a 26.2 percent decrease from May.
Foreclosure activity in the East Bay declined from a year ago, with fewer homeowners receiving notices of default and fewer homes having banks take ownership.
"The reason we are seeing numbers going down is not because there are fewer people having trouble making mortgage payments," said Daren Blomquist of RealtyTrac.com. Instead, loan modification programs and short sales are helping distressed borrowers avoid foreclosure, he said.
Alameda County, however, is countering the national trend - new data released last week shows households across a majority of large U.S. cities received more foreclosure warnings in the first six months of this year than in the first half of 2009. According to RealtyTrac Inc., 154 out of 206 metropolitan areas with at least 200,000 residents posted an annual increase in foreclosure activity between January and June.
The trend is the latest sign that the nation's foreclosure crisis is worsening as homeowners battling high unemployment and slow job growth continue to be late on their mortgage payments.
The California Housing Finance Agency, known as CalHFA, announced recently that the federal government had approved nearly $700 million in assistance for California homeowners struggling to stay in their homes. It’s the biggest infusion of federal money aimed directly at the state's struggling home- owners since the housing market meltdown began.
"We will use these funds to help as many families as possible remain in their homes and, in so doing, stabilize neighborhoods that have been severely impacted by foreclosures," Steven Spears, executive director of CalHFA, said in a statement.
The programs include:
- Up to six months of mortgage assistance for homeowners who have lost their jobs, with a cap of $1,500 monthly.
- Assistance for homeowners who owe past-due payments, with a required match by the mortgage lender or the borrower, with a cap of $15,000.
- Mortgage principal reduction for borrowers who owe significantly more on their loans than their homes are worth. Details have not been announced, but the goal is to work with lenders to get principal balances to "market levels," according to the Keep Your Home website.
All the programs will be available no later than Nov. 1, CalHFA said. Programs target only first mortgages and only owner-occupied homes.
The CalHFA plan, however, won't fix the state's foreclosure crisis, say some analysts. At the end of May, more than 132,000 California properties were scheduled for sale in foreclosure auctions, according to Foreclosure Radar.
The success of the CalHFA program may have already been previewed by the federal mortgage rescue program.
The Obama administration is revising the latest report on its troubled mortgage-relief program, and the changes are likely to show a greater number of borrowers facing foreclosure after having their loans modified.
The Treasury Department said last week that the mortgage company Fannie Mae, which helps run the program, provided inaccurate information about borrowers who restructured their loans under the program and then missed mortgage payments.
The accusations and the subsequent review are the latest problems for the $75 billion program. It has been widely criticized for failing to help hundreds of thousands of homeowners at risk of losing their homes. More than 40 percent of U.S. homeowners seeking help have chosen to drop out of the program.
For information on the CalHFA program, visit www.keepyourhomecalifornia.com or call 916-373-2585.