Virginia and Maryland foreclosure rates ranked 15th and 16th, respectively, among states last month as area home sales picked up, according to local real estate data.
Manassas City and Prince William County had the highest and second-highest foreclosure rates in Virginia, with Fairfax City ranking third, according to foreclosure-tracking firm RealtyTrac. In Maryland, Frederick County placed first, Prince George’s was second and Montgomery County was fourth.
Despite the high rates, Fairfax and Prince William counties — which posted the two highest foreclosure totals of any jurisdiction in the state, respectively, according to RealtyTrac — both saw declines in foreclosures compared with January 2008.
Meanwhile, existing home sales in the Prince William-Manassas-Manassas Park region more than doubled from January 2008, to 759, although the median sales price dropped by about 40 percent to $165,000, according to Metropolitan Regional Information Systems.
And while the data might be improving in some areas, John McClain, deputy director of George Mason’s Center for Regional Analysis, indicated that the news wasn’t entirely cause for celebration.
“As the last of the subprimes reset, the number of subprime-related foreclosures dropped,” McClain said in the January 2009 issue of the Prince William Newsletter. “The Prince William data show foreclosures beginning to taper off in late 2008, and we’ve been expecting this.”
“After lenders stopped offering subprimes, they did Alt-A mortgages, which were less than ‘A’ credit, but better documentation than subprimes,” he continued. “Alt-As have a longer, three- to five-year reset, and they will start coming due toward the end of 2009, and this could be the next wave.”
Nationwide, 274,399 foreclosures were filed in January, a 10 percent drop from December 2008 but up 18 percent from January 2008. One in every 266 U.S. houses received a foreclosure filing in January, according to RealtyTrac.
The Office of Thrift Supervision Wednesday called for institutions regulated by the federal agency to temporarily suspend foreclosures.
“OTS-regulated institutions would be supporting the national imperative to combat the economic crisis by suspending foreclosures until the [new stability plan] takes hold,” said OTS Director John Reich.
