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Foreclosures spike; Florida among worst

Fort Lauderdale and Miami are both among the top 10 nationally in quarterly filings.

LOS ANGELES - Homeowners across the United States are increasingly having trouble making their mortgage payments on time, but borrowers in metro areas of Florida, California and other once-booming housing markets are accounting for the biggest spikes in foreclosure filings, according to a mortgage research company.

RealtyTrac, in Irvine, Calif., calculates its foreclosure rate ranking by comparing the number of households in a metro area with the number of foreclosure filings, which include notices of default, auction sale notices or bank repossessions.

Stockton, about 83 miles east of San Francisco, had the highest foreclosure rate in the third quarter among the top 100 metro areas, with one foreclosure filing for every 31 households, RealtyTrac said.

Detroit was second, with one foreclosure filing for every 33 households. The Riverside-San Bernardino metro area, located about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, was third, with one filing for every 43 households.

Among Florida metro areas, Fort Lauderdale was ranked fourth and Miami was ranked eighth.

The housing market slump has made it harder for financially strapped homebuyers to sell their homes and avoid missing payments or losing their homes in foreclosure. Increasingly, many borrowers who took out adjustable-rate mortgages and other loans that potentially adjust to higher monthly payments after an initial period are also finding they can't afford their payments.

"What happens there is you have your basic economic imbalance between supply and demand," said Rick Sharga, vice president of marketing for RealtyTrac.

"It exacerbates the problem for people who are on the verge of default."

Stockton had 7,116 foreclosure filings on 4,409 properties during the quarter, an increase of more than 465 percent from the same quarter a year ago, the company said.

The Detroit metro area, which includes Livonia and Dearborn, reported 25,708 filings on 16,079 homes, up more than 93 percent from the same quarter last year. It had the third-highest number of filings during the quarter.

Los Angeles had the second-highest number of foreclosure filings during the quarter with 29,501 on 18,043 homes. The city's foreclosure rate was one filing for every 113 households, or 26th overall.

Some metro areas, including Baton Rouge, La.; McCallen-Edinburg-Pharr, Texas; and Greenville, S.C., saw foreclosure filings drop during the quarter.

Borrowers in Detroit and other metro areas in the Midwest who have been hard hit by job losses generally were receiving late-stage foreclosure filings, such as notices of auction or bank repossession.

Dave Webb, co-owner of Hudson & Marshall, a foreclosure auction firm based in Dallas, said most of the properties being auctioned by his firm in inland areas of California are investment properties that ended up being repossessed by lenders after the market tanked.

"What I'm selling this week - 700 homes in the Stockton-Oakland area - these properties were probably foreclosed a good year-and-a-half ago," Webb said.

The properties that end up in foreclosure now, however, will likely be homes bought by first-time buyers and others with adjustable-rate mortgages due to reset to higher monthly payments, he said.

[Last modified November 14, 2007, 01:03:34]