Foreclosure numbers rise again

How common are housing foreclosures becoming? According to RealtyTrac, an online publisher of foreclosure data, one in every 194 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing during the first quarter of the year.

In case you were unsure, that is a very high number. In fact, according to RealtyTrac, foreclosure filings were made on 649,917 properties in the first quarter, a 23 percent increase from the fourth quarter of last year and a whopping 112 percent increase from the same time one year earlier.

You can read the bad news at RealtyTrac’s site here.

To be clear, not all of the foreclosure filings last quarter will result in people losing their homes. The foreclosure activity that RealtyTrac covers includes default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions. Still, it’s a mess out there in the residential world.

Foreclosures, remember, don’t help anybody. The banks don’t want these homes back, especially in today’s weak residential market. But it looks, unfortunately, like foreclosure activity won’t be slowing anytime soon. This is one bad real estate market that’s showing few, if any, signs of lessening.