BOSTON – Rhode Island foreclosure deed listings, the public notices required following the close of a foreclosure sale, peaked last year in October, which accounted for 14.2 percent of the state’s 2008 total, according to data compiled by The Warren Group, a Boston-based tracker of real estate.
October was the only 2008 month to break 400 foreclosure deeds posted, with 495 foreclosure deeds were recorded statewide that month. By comparison, The Warren Group tracked 360 deeds posted in November, 351 in December and 3,479 all last year.
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Among communities, Providence led the state in foreclosures last year with 1,447 foreclosure deeds, followed by the 384 posted in Pawtucket and 293 posted in Cranston, but The Warren Group hasn’t tracked Rhode Island foreclosure deeds long enough to compare 2008 with prior years.
Meanwhile, Massachusetts foreclosure activity last year rose 62.4 percent compared with 2007 and nearly four times compared with its level in 2006, The Warren Group said in a Jan. 21 report. A total of 12,430 foreclosure deeds were recorded in the Bay State last year, up from 7,653 the year before and 3,130 in 2006.
“Sadly, over 12,000 people lost their homes to foreclosure last year” in Massachusetts, Warren Group CEO Timothy Warren Jr. said.
“The state experienced the sharpest increases in foreclosures in the first half of the year,” the CEO added. “While foreclosure deeds were increasing by double-digit percentages during the latter part of 2008 compared to the prior year, the increases were no where near what was happening in the first half of the year when foreclosure deeds were more than double what they were in 2007.”
Massachusetts foreclosure petitions – the first step in the foreclosure process – ended the year below the level reported in 2007, The Warren Group added.
Lenders filed 21,804 foreclosure petitions in 2008, down 26.3 percent from 2007 when there were 29,572. The data publisher credited a law that went into effect last year that requires lenders wanting to initiate a foreclosure to give delinquent borrowers 90 days to pay off mortgage loan defaults. December petitions to foreclose “jumped 21.7 percent to 1,625 from 1,335 in November, but were 40.4 percent lower than the 2,724 petitions filed during the same month in 2007,” the publisher said.
Meanwhile, the number of Bay State auction announcements tracked by the group rose to 19,270 last year, up 32.5 percent from 2007’s 14,546 and 189.4 percent from 2006’s 6,659 auction announcements reported statewide.
The Warren Group Inc. is a provider of New England real estate data and the publisher of Banker & Tradesman and other journals. Additional information is available at www.TheWarrenGroup.com.
