Reply to comment

A report out this morning from Realtytrac shows that Austin is defying the national trend when it comes to home foreclosures. The number of foreclosed properties on the auction block declined over the past year.

“We saw about 1,500 properties with foreclosure filings in the Austin metro area for the first quarter of 2012,” Blomquist, VP of Foreclosure Data for Realtytrac said. “That was down 51 percent from a year ago, [in] the first quarter of 2011.”

A 51 percent drop is a huge decline, and it’s based on a measurement of all foreclosure activity. Eldon Rude with the real estate-tracking firm MetroStudy says he isn’t surprised.”The economy is improving. We’re having good job growth in 2011 and 2012 has started out strong as well, and the housing market is picking up.”

While the RealtyTrac report shows Austin’s foreclosure activity being cut in half in the first quarter, it also says more than half of U.S. cities saw foreclosure rates go up in the same three months.

For the full story ... http://kut.org/2012/04/foreclosure-activity-drops-51-percent/#.T5lnOOyTwUA.facebook