Not too long ago ForeclosureS.com announced that the site offered over 5 million property listings. Even with the current foreclosure frenzy in the media, this number seemed inflated. They also advertised this figure directly on the homepage of the site, where other foreclosure listings companies offer their current listings. As mentioned in a prior post, “Figuring Out the Figures,” ForeclosureS.com now does not offer any current listing numbers anywhere on the site and has removed the “5 million listings” on their home page.

However, I was able to find this figure on one of their search pages. See the photo above for the screenshot of the 5 million listings advertised.

At the same time the screen shot was taken, I referred to the press inquiry page, which as an aside has been down for about a month now. The press inquiry page showed 1,062,576 current foreclosure filings, or actually a total for the last 6 months. While this number only represents the filings, or default notices, we can then refer back to Realty Trac’s figure, that on average foreclosures represent roughly 30% of all foreclosure filings. Given this figure, that would represent around 318,770 actual foreclosures.

ForeclosureS.com also lists auctions, but many of these auction properties would already have been represented in the pre-foreclosure tab. The next tab REO/bank owned was already calculated above.

Considering these figures, the total current listings would be around 1,381,346. Just to err on the safe side, let’s say that the same amount of properties in the auctions tab would be equal to the amount of actual foreclosures (although it would be significantly less). Considering this, the total listings number would be around 1.7 million listings. With these simple calculations, one could then assume that around 3.3 million listings are unaccounted for.

The Second quarter foreclosure reports continue to roll in with the latest figures from Realty Trac released. One general statistic released by Realty Trac, a foreclosure reporting company based out of Irvine, California, has been appearing on hundreds of newspaper articles across the country.

According to all articles and taken directly from the Realty Trac foreclosure activity report, “one in every 171 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing during the quarter.”

Performing calculations and some further investigation, one could take the same information and present it in a way more favorable to the reporter’s interest. This, in essence is reporter bias -a prominent factor in unregulated statistics.

In order to get to the foundation of the statistical representation, a reporter must first get the hard numbers.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau the latest households figure was in 2000 at 105,480,101. 1 out of every 171 households would then equal 616,842 national foreclosure filings for the second quarter of 2008.

One factor that could be misconstruing the data is the fact that households have largely increased since 2000. Based on the latest population census of 2006, the population increased at a rate of 1.06% per year. Applied to the number of households, one would then get a new number of 114,445,909 households in 2008 an increase of 14 million households. While the rate of foreclosure filings per household does not change dramatically, the rate of actual foreclosures per household does.

If you read through the majority of the Realty Trac foreclosure activity report you will find valuable information in the fine print. This information should be very prominent in the article, but it is not. According to the report, “bank repossessions, or REOs, accounted for 30 percent of total foreclosure activity in the second quarter.”

Using the 30% figure, you can then calculate 185,052 actual foreclosures for the second quarter of 2008. This number combined with the updated U.S. Census household information provides the following statistical summation of “foreclosure activity.”

1 in 618 households were foreclosed in the second quarter of 2008.

Or

0.16% all total U.S. households had an actual foreclosure.

Unfortunately, this figure would not have been in the best interest of the reporting company, thus presenting a more dramatic figure, complete with reporter bias.

It is now the second week in August and the rush for July foreclosure figures have begun. All foreclosure reporting companies have released their share of data to the media. The latest comes from a press release published August 11, 2008, “ForeclosureS.com: Pre-foreclosure Filings Set Record in July.” According to the article pre-foreclosure filings hit record highs in 14 states for the month of July.

We took thee states, and decided to compare the data with the actual listings on the web site. While foreclosureS.com offers a comprehensive “Press-Inquiry” statistics page, it is almost impossible to see the information broken down, into real time, without meticulous searching. The three states in question appear below, with their respective record monthly filings.
• Nevada (7,993);
• Hawaii (373);
• District of Columbia (206);
As for Nevada, the large number was not all that alarming as it is know across all sources of the heightened foreclosure activity through the state, particularly in Clark County. However, according to a previous Foreclosure Research post, “Figuring Out the Figures,” ForeclosureS.com usually only lists 3,000 records in high-volume areas such as Los Angeles County.
Only 3,000 records for Clark County were available on the website. With further calculations, all other counties in Nevada totaled 2,304. This figure plus the 3,000 max listings for Clark County equals only 5,304, leaving a total of 2,689 foreclosure listings unaccounted for.
As for Hawaii, we uncovered a similar finding. All total pre-foreclosure records found on the website for the published period of July totaled 124, leaving more than double the number of filings unaccounted for.
The most conclusive of all this data can be found with the District of Columbia foreclosure figures. ForeclosureS.com advises that Washington D.C. had a record of 206 foreclosure filings for the month of July. However, when you search for Washington D.C. on the ForeclosureS.com site, you will see that actually there are no pre-foreclosures available, and the pre-foreclosure tab is not even an option.
Based on the information collected, one could then conclude that ForeclosureS.com lists a different set of data for their subscribers, than they actually report to the media.

Notes:

Nevada (7,993);
Based on the date published:

Nevada foreclosures by County:
Carson- 840
Clark- only 3,000 at any given time
Churchill- 16
Douglas- 48
Elko- 17
Humboldt- 4
Lyon County- 600 (80 listings default loan amount $65 million?)
Nye -150
Pershing- 14
Washoe- 615
White Pine– 5
Total available on site: 5309
Leaving 2684 unaccounted for.

Washington DC: No pre-foreclosure listings

Hawaii foreclosures by County:
18 Hawaii County
75- Honolulu County
8- Kauai
23- Maui
Hawaii total (on listings): 124
Hawaii reported: 373

Foreclosure numbers begin to soar across all mediums as states and counties report their respective figures. One state, whose numbers have gained nationwide recognition is that of New Jersey, whose foreclosure filings seem to have more than doubled.

According to an article, published by The Star-Ledger on July 26, 2008, “foreclosure filings in New Jersey increased by 140 percent from April to June to more than 17,000.” Author Beth Fitzgerald continued by stating that Realty Trac had reported the increase and that foreclosures in New Jersey now represented the 12th-highest rate in the country.

The article indicates 17,000 foreclosure filings for New Jersey just in the month of June.  This total did in fact seem to be quite a jump for a state that has maintained fairly average foreclosure rates.  On the Realty Trac Q2 press release one can find that although foreclosures did increase by 140%, the increase was in foreclosures from the first quarter to the end of the last quarter, ending June 30, 2008.  The 17,000 foreclosures compile 3 months of filings, and are not comparative to April rates in the least nor June total filings as suggested in the article.

Reading further into the article, Fitzgerald cites a different set of numbers.  She states that according to “the latest figures from the [New Jersey] Office of Foreclosure, there were 47,668 New Jersey foreclosure filings in the year ended June 30.”

Doing some simple calculations based on the Realty Trac figures, first quarter New Jersey filings would total around 7,200 foreclosures plus an increase of 140% for second quarter filings, would equal 24,489 total foreclosure filings for the period ending June 30, 2008.

With the New Jersey court system citing almost double that of Realty Trac, one could conclude that the data is not a good indicator of New Jersey foreclosure trends and statistics. The data used in the article was not only incorrect, but even the incorrect data was misrepresented.