Foreclosures up again

The end of the month has been a bad time for anyone following the residential real estate market: This is when associations like the National Association of Realtors release their monthly housing sales statistics. It’s also when the data regarding housing foreclosures come out.

For a long time now, both these statistics have been depressing. And that didn’t change in June.

I’ve already written about yet another decline in sales statistics. Today, I have bad news regarding the number of housing foreclosures: They were up again in June. Significantly.

According to RealtyTrac, a national provider of foreclosed properties, one in every 171 households received a foreclosure notice in the second quarter of this year. That’s an increase of 121 percent compared to the same quarter one year earlier.

This is further evidence that the housing assistance legislation that Congress passed earlier this month is sorely needed.

What about you? Are you facing foreclosure? Know someone who is? What happened that led to this?