R.I. foreclosure filings double

PROVIDENCE – Foreclosure filings in Rhode Island almost doubled in May compared with the same month last year, RealtyTrac said Thursday.
The Irving, Calif.-based real estate tracking firm said there were 564 filings in the state in May, up from 287 at the same point last year.
Of those, 344 residential properties in the state received a notice of trustee sale last month, up from 49 last May. The notices are a precursor to a foreclosure sale, although some homeowners may be able to strike an 11th-hour deal with lenders.
Lenders repossessed another 220 homes, down from 238 the same month last year.
All told, RealtyTrac said foreclosure filings touched 1 in every 802 properties in the Ocean State last month. The company said that foreclosure notices touched a higher percentage of homes in 18 other states.
While notices in the Ocean State were up in May when compared with the same time last year, they dropped 22 percent compared with April 2011.
Across the United States, RealtyTrac said some 214,927 properties – or 1 in every 605 homes – received a foreclosure filing last month. The total number of properties marked a 33 percent decline from May 2010 and a 2 percent drop from April 2011.
“Foreclosure processing delays continue to mask the true face of the foreclosure situation, although there were some clues in the May numbers of what lies behind that mask,” RealtyTrac CEO James J. Saccacio said.
Saccacio said that filing spikes in some states indicate that lenders are moving batches of foreclosures forward as they clean up paperwork procedures and identify favorable market conditions. But, Saccacio said, it appeared that homes repossessed by banks were still coming on the market faster than than it could absorb.