West Virginia Repo Home Listings Still Low
In the first quarter of this year, the state of West Virginia received a jolt when its filings for repo home listings jumped by almost 96 percent compared to figures from the last quarter of 2008 and 134 percent higher from the first quarter of last year.
According to the U.S. Foreclosure Market Report of the RealtyTrac, filings for foreclosure in the first three months of this year were made on 335 properties. March filings for foreclosure reached 162, representing a 46 percent rise from the February figures and 138 higher from last year’s March level.
However, despite the drastic increase in its foreclosure rate in the first quarter, West Virginia still ranked low nationally at 45.
According to RealtyTrac Chief Executive Officer James J. Saccacio, foreclosures in West Virginia in the first three months of this year registered twice as much as that for the same period last year. He cited unemployment, especially in the manufacturing and construction sectors, as the major culprit of high foreclosures in the state.
In April, one out of 2,635 homeowners received filings of foreclosure, making West Virginia the 46th state with the highest foreclosure filings for the month.
In the county level, Jefferson was the highest in terms of foreclosure filings with one out of 355 homeowners under foreclosure proceedings, representing 7.4 more than the state’s average number of filings in the first quarter.
Right behind Jefferson County is Morgan County with one out of 730 houses under some kind of foreclosure proceedings, 3.6 times more than the average number of filings in the state.
Meanwhile, Berkeley County registered the third highest foreclosure rate with one out of 752 houses under foreclosure proceeding, 3.5 more than the state average.
Statewide, the 803,489 properties in West Virginia that are at risk of foreclosure accounted not more than 1 percent of the country’s total for the first three months of this year.
Nationwide, the number of homeowners at risk of losing their properties to foreclosure increased by 32 percent last month, compared with figures in April last year. The April 2009 percentage represented over 342,000 houses under foreclosure proceedings, with one out of 374 homes as recipient of a foreclosure filing, the highest monthly reported rate since RealtyTrac started tracking the foreclosure market in January 2005.
And April was the second month that the country’s urged to a significant level as the number of homeowners who are defaulting on their mortgages continue to increase unabated.
