(Save the date: RealShare Apartments comes to the Westin Bonaventure, Los Angeles, October 24.)

IRVINE, CA-Foreclosure filings—including default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions—decreased 7% in September, a reduction of 16% from September 2011, according to RealtyTrac’s US Foreclosure Market Report for September and the third quarter of 2012. September’s total was the lowest US total since July 2007.

“We’ve been waiting for the other foreclosure shoe to drop since late 2010, when questionable foreclosure practices slowed activity to a crawl in many areas, but that other shoe is instead being carefully lowered to the floor and therefore making little noise in the housing market—at least at a national level,” according to Daren Blomquist, VP at RealtyTrac. “Make no mistake, however: the other shoe is dropping quite loudly in certain states, primarily those where foreclosure activity was held back the most last year.”

Blomquist added that in several states where the foreclosure flow was not so dammed up last year, a roller-coaster pattern in foreclosure activity is anticipated going forward due to recent legislation or court rules that substantively change the rules to properly foreclose. “A backlog of delayed foreclosures will likely build up in those states as lenders adjust to the new rules, with many of those delayed foreclosures eventually hitting down the road.”

As GlobeSt.com reported in August, US foreclosure activity decreased 3% in July from the previous month, down 10% from July 2011, yet the number of properties beginning the foreclosure process on an annual basis had risen for the third straight month, according to RealtyTrac.

Instant Insights /

Foreclosure Filings Hit Five-Year Low

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