Foreclosure houses for sale may rise during the holidays in the city of Brockton, Massachusetts after unemployment pushed more borrowers into foreclosure, according to data from the Plymouth County Registry of Deeds.
In October, foreclosure filings in Plymouth County, where Brockton is located, climbed up to its highest level of 317 filings. During the previous two months of August and September, a total of 295 foreclosure actions were posted, making total filings during the three-month period of August to October the highest three-month foreclosure total in the past 3 years.
According to Janine Carreiro, lead community organizer for the coalition Brockton Interfaith Community which has been helping homeowners fight foreclosures, the housing situation for many families will become worse if the local government does not do something to prevent more layoffs and to create job opportunities.
John Buckley, registrar of deeds for Plymouth County, explained that foreclosure filings do not automatically advance to actual foreclosures. These are notices given by lenders to homeowners to pay their arrears and restore their accounts to current status to stop the foreclosure process.
Buckley added that typically in Plymouth, about 34 percent of houses notified of foreclosure ultimately enter lists of foreclosure houses for sale.
Based on data from the Plymouth County Registry of Deeds, the foreclosure total in October was the biggest foreclosure number since the county registry started posting foreclosure data on its website in March 2007.
Among areas in the county, Brockton posted the highest number of filings with 97. Middleboro was next with 22 and the rest posted 8 filings each. These were Bridgewater, East Bridgewater, Abington and Rockland.
According to Brian Moriarty, head of the housing counseling nonprofit Brockton Neighborhood Housing Services, the predominant cause of foreclosures over the past several months was unemployment. Last September, the jobless rate in Plymouth hit 9.7 percent.
Before July this year, Moriarty said, foreclosure filings were on a declining trend as foreclosures due to subprime lending were slowing. But foreclosures began to rise again in August when job losses started to increase across the city.
During the three-month period ended October, a total of 712 foreclosure actions were filed in Plymouth, a substantial increase from the 398 filings during the same period last year.
In October, a total of 125 homes in Plymouth County entered lists of foreclosure houses for sale, the highest number posted in the county since the middle of 2008.
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