One of the important threads we’ve been following in this blog is home foreclosure.
The real estate crisis and the Great Recession that followed left huge numbers of homeowners underwater on their mortgages. Many of these homeowners have been unable to keep up with their payments, and there has been wave after wave of foreclosures rolling across the country.
Texas has certainly has its share of these foreclosures. After all, Texas is a big state. As we noted in our October 10 post, however, the percentage of homes in foreclosure in Texas has actually been below the national average during the last year.
In today’s post, we will update you on the latest residential foreclosure data for Texas.
According to RealtyTrac, a firm that tracks real-estate data, the number of homes going into the residential foreclosure process has dropped in Texas recently. It is down by 3 percent since November of last year.
The recent data also show a significant drop in completed foreclosures. In fact, the percentage decline in completed foreclosures was greater than the decline for houses newly entering the foreclosure process.
Overall, then, the news on the foreclosure scene is encouraging, as the nation’s housing market slowly heals from the scars from the crisis and uncertainty of recent years.
For a given individual homeowner, however, the reality may be quite different. If someone has fallen behind on mortgage payments and is at risk of losing his or her house, it is crucial to know how to respond to that challenge.
Keep in mind that a bankruptcy filing is often a viable option in such circumstances. In particular, the automatic stay on debt collection that comes with a bankruptcy filing can play a key role in helping you – literally and figuratively – keep your house in order.
Source: San Antonio Business Journal, “Foreclosure filings down nearly 40 percent in Texas in November,” Tricia Lynn Silva, Dec. 19, 2013