In today’s Daily Progress Brian McNeill writes that the area is weathering the foreclosure crisis better than most, but it still looks like a bad situation. 0.5% of area homeowners are facing foreclosure, compared to 0.8% for the whole of Virginia and 1.3% for the whole country. Piedmont Housing Alliance reports a 174% increase in people asking for help between ’05-’07. But the most clever figure comes from the Progress itself:
Meanwhile, the number of notices of foreclosure published in the Daily Progress’ classifieds section also jumped significantly. Last year saw a 30 percent increase in the notices over 2006. Moreover, there were 47 percent more foreclosure notices in January than in the previous year.
Why the comparatively low numbers here?
A key reason Charlottesville has fewer foreclosures is because the region has far fewer subprime mortgage loans than elsewhere in the state and region. Roughly 2.43 percent of the Charlottesville area’s owner-occupied homes were financed by a subprime loan, while that figure was 5.66 percent in Richmond, 4.14 across Virginia and 5.62 percent for the nation.
I assume we’ll know if the numbers spike, because foreclosure scam signs will spring up in the median strips like mushrooms after a spring rain.
The JUMP in foreclosure notices in the DP is because of the requirement for the publishing of the foreclosure notice in a newspaper of general circulation that publishes Xtimes a week with PAID circulation…while the property may be in Louisa or Amherst counties, the nearest publication that meets the LEGAL publication requirement may not be the local newspaper at all.
The foreclosure notice does not have to be effective, just published according to notice requirements.
Though presumably that’s been the case for years now, so the jump wouldn’t be attributable to outlying areas. But your point that the raw numbers are wrong is certainly interesting — I had no idea about those requirements.