Dayton Daily News
By Tim Tresslar, Staff Writer
DAYTON — Foreclosure filings, which had been waning locally, surged by 51.7 percent in January in the four-county Dayton metro area, according to a report released Thursday, Feb. 11.
In January, 1,420 properties in the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) received a default or auction notice or were seized, versus 936 during the same month a year ago, said Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc. One in 269 homes received a filing in January.
Daren Blomquist, a spokesman for RealtyTrac, said the January numbers mark the largest monthly total recorded by his company for Dayton since November 2007.
“It’s probably too early to say with just one month under our belt that somehow there’s a second wave of foreclosures happening in Dayton,” Blomquist said. “But if this trend continues over the next few months, that would probably be interpreted that we’re seeing a kind of resurgence, a second wave of foreclosure activity there.”
Montgomery County Recorder Willis Blackshear said foreclosures will continue to spike this year as lenders back away from limits they placed on themselves while they waited for state lawmakers to approve a law establishing a moratorium. Two anti-foreclosure measures passed the Ohio House in 2009, but not the Senate, Blackshear said.
“If it’s not going to move through the state legislature, what motivation is there for these banks and mortgage companies to do what the state legislature won’t do?” he said.
Blackshear said he expects the county’s caseload to grow this year and continue rising through 2013.
“This thing is nowhere near over,” he said.
During the first month of 2010, foreclosure filings increased in Miami, Montgomery and Preble counties, but subsided in Greene County, compared to the same month in 2009, according to RealtyTrac.
One area of concern for 2011, he said, is the workers displaced by the 2008 closing of the General Motors’ truck assembly plant in Moraine who are receiving a percentage of their pay over two years may end up in foreclosure when those benefits end. Another complicating factor, he said, is that even those who wind up in new careers may find themselves making less than they did as GM workers.
Beth Deutscher, executive director for the Homeownership Center of Greater Dayton, said she was surprised by the jump in filings. Her agency is working with dozens of troubled homeowners and their lenders to get their mortgage terms changed permanently through the federal government’s Making Home Affordable program, she said. Once a borrower applies for a permanent modification, lenders aren’t supposed to push forward with foreclosure proceedings, she said.
Statewide, foreclosure filings in Ohio fell by less than 1 percent over the same period last year. And across the country the number of filings jumped by 15 percent in a year-over-year comparison.
Locally, the change between December 2009 and last month was even greater, RealtyTrac said.
In the Dayton MSA, the number of properties against which filings were made grew to 1,420 from 810 in December, a 75.3 percent gain, RealtyTrac said.
