But in the first half of this year, the pace of foreclosure filings has started to climb up again, with April having the highest number of filings.

In the first half of the year, 2,249 foreclosure actions were filed by mortgage lenders, compared to the 2,088 filed in the first half of last year. The highest monthly total was 452, which occurred in April.

Analysts in Summit cited the continuing economic downturn and the end of foreclosure moratoriums as the main cause for the increase in filings after a two-year decline. They also expect that the increased pace of foreclosure will increase the number of foreclosed properties for sale in the area.

The continued rise in unemployment rate, which is now at a staggering 9.7 percent in Summit, and the expected readjustment of adjustable-rate mortgage loans to higher rates will worsen the foreclosure situation in the county.

Another reason for the increased pace of foreclosure is the end of foreclosure moratoriums, particularly those of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These two government-controlled enterprises own or guarantee nearly 31 million mortgage loans worth approximately $5.5 trillion, representing around half of all home loans in the country.

Mary Schoenfeld, top executive of American Eagle Mortgage and chairperson of the Summit County Consumer Affairs, said that the federal programs launched either by former President George Bush or by President Barack Obama have failed to help troubled homeowners.

However, Judge Elinore Marsh Stormer insisted that many mortgage lenders are willing to help distressed homeowners, but about half of those with foreclosure filings do not respond to the foreclosure lawsuits.

Stormer said that many homeowners abandon their homes without trying to negotiate with the lenders, just allowing their houses to become foreclosed properties for sale. She also added that about 60 percent of foreclosure filings the court referred for mediation have been settled.

The number of foreclosed properties for sale is expected to rise further in Ohio, according to Jennifer Flatter, an officer at the Ohio Department of Commerce.

Despite the state’s own foreclosure prevention program called Save the Dream, more than 11,000 foreclosure actions were filed in Ohio in May, based on a nationwide real estate study. One house in every 446 housing units in the state was hit with a foreclosure action and more than 7,000 units were already foreclosed properties for sale.

In its lawsuit, the city claimed that Wells Fargo had preyed on black communities in the area with subprime loans, driving many homeowners to go into default and eventually, foreclosures.

According to Legg, he would decide whether to conduct a trial on the initial lawsuit to be filed in court by a city. The allegation contends that a mortgage lending company violated the Fair Housing Act federal law with predatory loans that push higher the number of bank REO properties.

In New York, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the city’s office of the attorney general has the authority to conduct an investigation on whether major banks practiced discriminatory lending against minorities who were seeking mortgages.

Meanwhile, in Baltimore, the lawsuit it filed against Wells Fargo alleged that the bank discriminated against African American borrowers by enticing them with high-cost subprime loans even when some of them would have been eligible for prime-rate mortgages.

The city claimed that the policies of Wells Fargo had led to an increase in the number of bank REO properties in targeted neighborhoods, leading to the devastation of the city’s economy due to low tax revenue and exacerbating housing, police and fire costs.

Tony Paschal, former loan officer in Wells Fargo, stated in his affidavit that loan officers from the banks were made to categorize African Americans as those who do not pay their bills and were often referred to as mud people or niggers.

Wells Fargo attorney Andrew Sandler argued that there is lack of evidence showing that the bank intentionally targeted African American borrowers or that they were encourage to go the route of subprime loans with high interest rate.

According to Sandler, out of the 143 foreclosure cases, 100 were due to excessive obligations, 43 were due to illness and job loss accounted for 41.

From 2005 to 2008, over 60 percent of Well Fargo’s bank REO properties were located in city sections where inhabitants are 60 percent blacks.

According to city officials, nearly 60 percent of troubled homeowners were helped by the program. Since its inception in June 2008 up to May 31, 2009, the program helped 2,776 properties avoid becoming repo houses for sale. These figures were out of the 4,690 distressed properties referred to the city’s residential mortgage foreclosure prevention program.

The program, handled by the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, gives opportunity to troubled borrowers to meet with their lenders, housing advocates, lawyers and judges to try to work out solutions that will allow them to remain in their properties.

Lending institutions and banks are required to refer repossession cases to the Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion program in an effort to find ways to allow distressed homeowners to make their accounts current by modifying their mortgage payments to make them affordable.

Attorney Christopher DeNardo pointed out that under the program, all parties involved are winners. Delinquent homeowners get to avoid repo houses for sale and lenders would be able to avoid the expensive and time-consuming foreclosure proceeding.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter cited Philadelphia’s program and initiated a law to emulate the initiative nationwide. Earlier this month, during the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Specter called on various states to approve laws that will require mortgage lending institutions to negotiate with troubled homeowners first before making steps towards foreclosure.

Volunteer lawyer Kari Samuels said that many troubled borrowers are delayed on their payments for as long as two years, representing a mortgage of between $20,000 and $100,000. She explained that she usually tries to create a settlement by convincing lending institutions to accept lower arrears in late fees or interest charges or to totally drop attorneys’ fees.

She added that lending institutions may seek settlements by offering to extend the outstanding loan, reducing interest rate or the principal. She claimed that lenders are willing to work things out with troubled homeowners to avoid costly foreclosure proceedings.

Nationwide market data in May showed that there were about 321,480 homes in the brink of foreclosure or one out of 398 properties were in danger of becoming repo houses for sale.

More and more tenants find themselves out in the street because their landlords failed or neglected to inform them that they are living on REO properties. Housing Rights Inc. housing advocacy director Arlene Bradley said that the number of renters evicted out of their houses rose by almost 50 percent nationwide.

Before the recently passed legislation which went into effect last May, renters were left at the mercy of lenders after the properties they are living went into foreclosure. American Tenants Association executive director William Deegan explained that in Arizona, renters were forced out from their homes after given only less than a week’s notice to vacate the property.

The new legislation, which is an addendum to a housing bill that aims to prevent the foreclosure crisis, requires lenders who took over a property or new owners of REO properties purchased at auctions to allow tenants to stay at the property not less than three months or until their leases expired.

The rule only varies on those who purchased the foreclosed property with the intention of living in it. If this is the case, new owners have the right to terminate a tenant’s lease with three months’ notice.

South Brooklyn Legal Services director of litigation Ed Josephson said the rule gives a 90-day guarantee to renters unlike the previous one that do not give them any option.

However, some criticized the law as being incomplete. They pointed out that often, tenants are at the mercy of a financial system and courts that are both inefficient in dealing with their problems. They added that it is more likely than not that renters will lose their security deposits if landlords go into foreclosure.

Another problem facing renters of REO properties is maintenance. Most often distressed landlords would just let safety standards lapse and would not bother about maintenance and repair.

Data showed that most evictions happened on renters of small-scale lodgings, duplexes and triplexes.

Statewide, sales of previously owned homes, including houses in foreclosed home listings, increased by 16 percent to 13,921 housing units. In May last year, just a little over 12,000 houses were sold. Compared to April this year, total sales in May from foreclosure home listings and non-foreclosure listings increased by more than 6 percent statewide.

Sean Snaith, head of the Institute for Economic Competitiveness at the University of Central Florida, said that the jump in sales of properties in foreclosed home listings and non-foreclosure listings in the past several months indicates a positive trend in the residential market. The other positive sign is the slowdown in the decline of home prices.

However, Snaith added it is not yet time to declare that the residential market is stabilizing because home prices have not stopped dropping. He said he hopes the increasing pace of home sales continue so that the market can begin to recover.

Polk County’s housing market has been duplicating the statewide home sale and price trends. In May, more than 300 properties from foreclosed home listings and non-foreclosure listings were sold, representing an 18 percent increase from the total sales of 271 units in May 2008.

Compared to April’s sales of 323 units, however, Polk’s May home sales represented a decrease.

In Florida, the median price for a single family house decreased to $144,400 in May, an almost 30 percent drop from the $203,800 median in May last year.

The median home price in Polk County decreased in May to $112,300, compared to the $146,500 median home price in May 2008. The median price point refers to the point where half of total homes sold were priced higher and half of total sales were priced lower.

Property analysts have observed that the statewide pre-owned median price last month surpassed each of the statewide median home sales prices in the past 4 months in Florida. They interpreted this as the overall housing market effect of prices of properties in foreclosed home listings.

The median price for condos in foreclosed home listings in Polk County also decreased in May to $113,400, a nearly 40 percent decrease from the $181,700 median sales price in May 2008. But while statewide condo sales increased in May, Polk County condo sales decreased.

Bill Wheat, CEO of home builder D.R. Horton, said there is too much uncertainty in the home building industry because of the persistent foreclosure activity, the rising joblessness rate and other difficulties in the national economy.

Wheat expressed his expectation that the home building industry will continue to face challenges from foreclosed new homes for the rest of 2009 and the next year. He also mentioned the report that about 1 million adjustable-rate home loans will readjust in the next couple of years.

ARM readjustments are getting homeowners and others worried because the significantly higher monthly payments would certainly be beyond many borrowers’ financial capabilities, leading to more foreclosed new homes.

Richard Dugas, CEO of Pulte Homes, said the demand side of the home building market is being hit by lack of buyers with approved loans and that the supply side of the market is battered by oversupply. Aside from large inventories of unsold new homes, the supply of foreclosed new homes that are much lower priced is adding to the oversupply problem in the home construction industry.

To compete with foreclosed new homes, some builders have been offering incentives such as free upgrades and buy-downs on home loans.

Douglas Yearley, top executive at luxury home builder Toll Brothers, added that banks have made restrictions on their home lending activities, rejecting many applicants for mortgage loans and reducing the number of persons able to buy new homes.

Yearley predicted that about 50 percent of small and middle-sized home builders may have to close because of the current hardship. If the recession continues, home builders with high levels of debt will not be able to refinance and pay off their loans. Foreclosures on multifamily building projects have been increasing in recent weeks.

New-home sales have remained weak in 2009, as seen in home sales data.

This week, home builder Lennar Corp. released its report showing a quarterly loss, but it was encouraged by the optimism showed by investors who supported the stock because of improvements in its balance sheet.

These home building executives recognize the effects of foreclosed new homes on their operations, but they keep on finding ways to survive and ride out the recession.

Court-managed foreclosure auctions in Tarrant are held every first Tuesday of the month. For the July foreclosure auction, a total of 2,015 homes were listed, an increase of 66 percent from the total in July 2008.

For the first 7 months of this year, Tarrant County has already posted more than 11,000 foreclosures, an increase of more than 20 percent compared to the first 7 months last year.

Real estate analysts in the area said that most of the foreclosure postings are repeat postings as mortgage lenders struggle to cope with continued foreclosure actions.

Most lenders do not have enough personnel to process foreclosures and applications for loan modifications. They are also postponing foreclosure actions on many defaulting borrowers because of lack of personnel. Some banks have also not enhanced their bank systems to cope with large numbers of documents to process.

According to housing analysts, lenders are still digesting the provisions of the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable Program and still training their personnel on how to implement the program. Some are still crafting policies to guide customer service personnel or mediation representatives in their negotiations with distressed homeowners.

Meanwhile in Dallas County, a total of 2,579 homes were listed for the July foreclosed home auction, an increase of nearly 60 percent from the total in July 2008. In Collin County, 834 properties were listed, an increase of 67 percent compared to July last year. Denton County posted a total of 644 units for the July foreclosed home auction, representing an increase of nearly 70 percent from the July 2008 total.

All in all, the total number of properties listed for the July foreclosed home auction is 6,072, an increase of more than 60 percent from the July auction in 2008. The total for the 12 month period ended June this year has surpassed 35,000, representing a 20 percent rise from the prior 12-month period.

Housing analysts in Tarrant said that the number of housing units for the July foreclosure auction is the highest monthly total in the county’s foreclosure auction history.

However, some of the analysts explain that the July foreclosed home auction figure may not be representing real current data because many lenders are making foreclosure refilings as they are still improving their processes and systems to cope with surging foreclosure and loan modification activities.

In January, the percentage of foreclosed houses was 46 percent, the highest level reached in the county’s home resale market. During the last months of 2008, lenders made a lot of foreclosures in Orange County, putting hundreds of foreclosed homes into the market.

In August last year, over 1,400 foreclosed houses were repossessed by banks, the highest monthly total in the county’s foreclosure history. Resales of foreclosed houses started to increase after August and then subsided in starting February as national and state foreclosure moratoriums were implemented to make way for the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable program.

All the foreclosure homes sold in May were repossessed within the 12-month period prior to May.

Some real estate market analysts contend that the declining share of foreclosed houses in home sales is due to the decision of banks to control the release of their foreclosed properties to the market in order to prevent further home price declines.

Others contend that the banks are also controlling the reflection of foreclosed houses in their books to make their financial statements more attractive to investors.

But banks would have to release the rest of their foreclosure inventories to the market soon because new foreclosure units are entering their books.

According to county foreclosure data, banks have repossessed 591 condos and homes in Orange County in May, a rise of nearly 23 percent from April but a drop of nearly 48 percent from May 2008.

California has implemented several measures to control foreclosure actions across the state, including foreclosure prevention counseling services, foreclosure moratoriums, mandatory meetings with borrowers before default notice filing and financial assistance incorporating the $8,000 federal tax credit.

But many are not being helped by the federal and state programs because of various reasons such as loss of jobs, inadequate income, high levels of non-mortgage personal debts, underwater loans, ineligibility of jumbo loans and inability to trace the real holder of the mortgage loans.

Nevertheless, federal and state mortgage data show that many lenders are finally working out loan modifications for qualified borrowers. The loan modification and 90-day moratorium law that became effective in June is expected to help more homeowners save their homes from becoming foreclosures houses.

If the forecast comes true, it would be the county’s second time to post a monthly foreclosure record of more than 5,000. In February this year, there were 5,240 foreclosure properties in the county.

As of last week, over 45,000 foreclosure actions are in their first stages. In the past 3 years, a total of 73,000 foreclosure filings have been completed, adding 73,000 foreclosure homes to foreclosure listings.

Additionally, mortgage lenders have also filed 5,700 pre-foreclosure notices last week, an increase of 700 from the pending transactions last month.

Many foreclosure filings are taking more than three months to become actual foreclosures because homeowners are working out affordable repayment schemes with their lenders or negotiating short sales to avoid foreclosure.

In Maricopa, short sales have been rising, but short selling is still only around 5 percent of total home sales.

Puzzled by the large discrepancy between the number of foreclosure filings and foreclosure properties, property analysts are contending that banks are intentionally controlling the release of their foreclosed properties into the market to prevent further drastic declines in home prices.

Leading property analysts say the banks’ decision is the right approach because overloading the housing market with around 45,000 foreclosure properties all at once will push down home prices to unimaginably low levels and devastate the market.

Some analysts also say that some banks are postponing actual foreclosures on many of their properties to control the amount of their losses. Large amounts of losses would discourage investors reviewing the banks’ books.

On other hand, some housing analysts say that many lenders have participated in the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable Program. Either the banks really want to reduce the number of their foreclosure properties or they just want to comply with federal requests, especially for banks that received bailout money from the government.

But according to several federal bank regulators, the Obama administration’s foreclosure prevention program appears to be making a dent on the foreclosure problem, as shown in the data presented by HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan in his meeting with real estate editors.

As the Phoenix area is still experiencing large numbers of residential foreclosures, it is also expecting large numbers of foreclosure properties in the commercial property sector as developers of office, apartment and retail buildings continue to be downed by the recession.

However, the climbing unemployment rate is causing concern among industry experts who feared that many people who lost their jobs may soon have difficulty making their mortgage payments, thus pushing the number of REO property to rise again.

In May, 582 foreclosure actions were reported, representing a decline of 58.6 percent from the 1,405 recorded during the same month last year. Last month’s figures were 24.3 percent lower from the previous month.

Statewide, foreclosure deeds recorded were down in numbers by 26.3 percent or 4,110 from 5,576 for the same period a year ago. Industry experts noted that last month’s recorded numbers of foreclosure deeds were the lowest since the April 2007 figures.

But with the growing rate of unemployment in Massachusetts, industry experts fear that those who lost their jobs will struggle with their monthly mortgage payments and push foreclosures to rise again.

Still, other industry experts attributed the decline in the number of REO property to the Massachusetts Land Court’s decision in March which invalidated two foreclosure actions because lenders involved failed to provide proof that they were the true holders of the titles to the distressed properties.

The Massachusetts Land Court’s decision had caused concerns to ripple throughout the real estate industry and prompted some lenders and banks to stall sales of repossessed homes.

Director of litigation at Harvard Law School’s WilmerHale Legal Services Center Paul Collier noted that some title companies are hesitating at insuring property titles in repossession sales because of pending litigations.

He explained that many homebuyers are having difficulty getting financing because lending institutions could not provide titles to foreclosure sales. He added that some lenders who want to hold foreclosure auctions could not attract buyers at those events.

Meanwhile, petitions for foreclosure increased significantly last month, in sharp contrast to the decline in the number of foreclosure deeds. The 2,329 filings of foreclosure petitions were almost six times higher than the 390 petitions recorded for the same period the previous year.

Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies director Nicolas Retsinas pointed out that whatever is the reason for the decline in the number of REO property, the fact remains that foreclosure is not yet over.