It’s time once again to expand on our preview of foreclosure activity with a more detailed look at March’s stats in King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties. First up, the Notice of Trustee Sale summary:
March 2012
King: 600 NTS, down 45.6% YOY
Snohomish: 349 NTS, down 41.1% YOY
Pierce: 300 NTS, down 51.3% YOY
Same story that we’ve seen all year: Each county was down from a year ago, but up month-to-month. It will be interesting to see if foreclosures continue to climb through the spring and summer.
Here’s your interactive Tableau dashboard updated with the latest foreclosure data:
The percentage of households in the chart above is determined using OFM population estimates and household sizes from the 2000 Census. King County came in at 1 NTS per 1,387 households, Snohomish County had 1 NTS per 786 households, and Pierce had 1 NTS for every 1,074 households (higher is better).
According to foreclosure tracking company RealtyTrac, Washington’s statewide foreclosure rate for March of one foreclosure for every 500 housing units was 35th highest among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Note that RealtyTrac’s definition of “in foreclosure” is much broader than what we are using, and includes Notice of Default, Lis Pendens, Notice of Trustee Sale, and Real Estate Owned.
Reminder: I had been including a heat map of Washington counties from RealtyTrac on these posts each month, but they did something to their embedded map that was forwarding my site readers to a RealtyTrac registration page, which is not acceptable. So no more Washington State heat map.
Hit the jump for a larger version of the chart that shows the percentage of households in each county receiving a foreclosure notice each month:
Note: The graphs above are derived from monthly Notice of Trustee Sale counts gathered at King, Snohomish, and Pierce County records. For a longer-term picture of King County foreclosures back to 1979, hit this chart and drag the date slider to its full range. For the full legal definition of what a Notice of Trustee Sale is and how it fits into the foreclosure process, check out RCW 61.24.040. The short version is that it is the notice sent to delinquent borrowers that their home will be repossessed in 90 days.