Foreclosure rates up in Fresno

The Business Journal is reporting that foreclosure rates in Fresno are up from 2.1% of all single family residences in foreclosure last year at this time to 3.5% this year. That is an increase of 67% over last year's historically high foreclosures.

The interesting thing about this statistic is that a lot of mortgage companies are actually delaying foreclosures in some cases because they don't have the capacity to liquidate all of the properties and they don't want the liability of dealing with a lot of property on their hands. Consequently, I often have clients who want to surrender a property to the creditor where it will take 6 or even 12 months before the mortgage company will start the foreclosure process. Then, it takes another 6 months or so to complete the process. These numbers could be a lot higher.