On the upside, while foreclosures are up from previous years, many states have seen consecutive months of decreased foreclosure rates. Some experts say recent legislation, specifically the Obama Administration’s Making Home Affordable Program, has played a significant role in the latest figures.
The program offers homeowners with mortgages guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the option to refinance at more affordable rates or more affordable payment schedules. The program is back by $75 billion in tax payer funds.
However, the billion dollar question may be “is it working?” According …

It is evident that ForeclosureResearch is not the only one with concerns over certain foreclosure reporting companies The Housing Assistance Council, a Washington DC non-profit, has also expressed concerns over foreclosure data in certain areas of the country. Such concerns were recently released in an October 2009 HAC report, “What is the housing foreclosure situation in rural America?”
The report specifically describes concerns over RealtyTrac figures. Here is a snippet of the report:
RealtyTrac presents data for approximately 2,200 counties across the United States. This excludes roughly 900 counties, most of …

According to a revealing article in the Hartford Courant, RealtyTrac “radically” revised its total Connecticut foreclosure filings for the month of June. The article published on August 15, 2009, written by Kenneth R. Gosselin, states that the company first reported an 80 percent decrease in foreclosure filings when actually there was an increase of 31.5 percent.
The original numbers were revised due to further investigation by Courant reporters following the surprisingly low level of filings originally reported by the foreclosure data company.
RealtyTrac first reported only 56 foreclosure filings while the revision …

In many foreclosure news articles readers will see a whole slew of figures representing the data collected from various foreclosure listing companies. However, rarely will you see a cautionary note, or asterisks in this case, to forewarn readers that the number may require further information or that there is a considerable omission relating to the information.
There are however several asterisks in the latest report issued by Realty Trac. Their September and third quarter 2008 figures are filled with asterisks. Most are denoted next to the “% change” from that …

Over the last year, a handful of articles have come out disputing certain foreclosure listing companies from releasing inaccurate foreclosure data into the media.  Unfortunately, due to the illusive nature of foreclosures in themselves, these articles do not come out as often as need be.  But when these reports are released, they come out with their gloves off. The latest of these reports comes out of West Virginia.
According to an article published by the Charleston Gazette, “five times more West Virginia homes and businesses were sold in foreclosure in 2007,” …

With August foreclosure figures trickling in to the media this month, more erroneous data reporting is represented throughout all media outlets. Foreclosure filings for August did increase but total foreclosures for the period varied depending on the source.
According to an article in the Los Angeles Biz Journal, “Foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 303,879 US properties during August.”  The article, published on September 12, 2008, titled “California has nation’s 2nd highest foreclosure rate in August,” continues by stating that while there …

Recently within the media there were a couple articles reporting on the increase in foreclosures in San Diego County.  While all the articles stated that foreclosure flings in San Diego had in fact increased, all of the articles had differing numbers representing the increase.  The numbers that differed were the total foreclosure filings for San Diego County for the period of July 2008.
The first article published August 22, 2008, “Foreclosures up 213% for July over last year,” stated that, “2,004 San Diego County homes went into foreclosure in July.” The …