Trend or Perturbation

[Jim Cummings]

Foreclosure Postings are up in a number of counties monitored by Roddy real Estate Services of Addison, TX.

Here is a quick breakdown of our posting volume change for several major counties:

Dallas County: Down 2%

Williamson County: Up 6% (Round Rock / Georgetown, TX)

Bell County: Up 16% (Temple / Killeen)

Bexar County up 16% (San Antonio)

Tarrant County: Up 22% (Fort Worth)

Travis County: Up 28% (Austin)

Denton County: Up 30%  (Denton, TX - North Of DFW)

Collin County : Up 31%  (McKinney, TX - East Of DFW)

[David Ivy]

@Jim Cummings

Thank you for sharing. It's difficult to draw useful conclusions from percentages alone. For example, if there were 120 foreclosures last month in Travis County, a 28% increase the next month would be around 153 foreclosures. That doesn't seem like anything noteworthy. The 28% increase can look like big jump, but we'd need to know more. Is the percentage change year over year, from one month to the next, or something else? Does the report have the actual monthly foreclosure numbers for Travis County? How do the current foreclosure numbers in Travis County compare to historical highs and lows?

[Jeffrey A. Rose]

Interesting data, thanks @Jim Cummings.  I guess you need to correlate with some local economic data to determine if there is a “why”.  Also it would be interesting to look at the long historical data to understand if it’s a trend or not.

[Pete Harper]

Jim, interesting data.  Can you please post more details. Like David says it would be great to see the underlying data. For example Travis county might have had three foreclosures last month and four this month. That would be a 33% increase. 
Do you have the numbers for Brazos County. I’d be interested to see how BCS is doing. 

[Jim Cummings]

To: All

Apologies - I don't have more data. Used to be a Roddy Subscriber when I lived in Austin. And, I still get an occasional email from them. I thought the topic might get some interest, but sorry that was all the data in the email. 

Not doing a Promo for Roddy's Real Estate Reports - but if you have interest in foreclosures in one of the major Texas Metros (DFW, Austin, San Antonio) and they just expanded to El Paso, it might be worth investing in his subscription service. As I recall the Austin updates had options for Travis, Williamson & Hays Counties.  

[Rick Pozos]

Property taxes are a big part in Texas Mortgage payments. When property values rise 50% over the last few years, so do property taxes. Properties are appraised every year and will move up in value every year in good times(10% cap per year on homestead, no cap on investment properties). 10% rise in your taxes can be substantial. Most people are JUST qualifying for their homes when buying. THEN your payment goes up every year!!!

There is nothing surprising that mortgage foreclosures are going up. They had been at historical lows, but not anymore. About 300 per month was the low. We are now at about 400+ per month in Bexar county. In 2008 there were months with 1200+ per month!! I dont think we are going back to 1200, but 600 to 700 will be the norm in the near future here in Bexar County which San Antonio takes up most of.