Foreclosure

According to a recently released report from The Warren Group, the number of foreclosure petitions in the state of Massachusetts shot up by 72.5 percent in July 2014 from the same month a year ago.

In Fannie Mae's July 2014 Monthly Summary released on August 29, the GSE reported that July's serious delinquency rate of 2.0 percent for single-family properties is at its lowest level since October 2008.

Foreclosure activity was down all over the nation in July, particularly in the area of foreclosure inventory – homes that are in any stage of the foreclosure process – where there was a 34.4 percent drop from July 2013, according to CoreLogic's July 2014 National Foreclosure Report released on August 28.

Michigan-based real estate finance and credit law firm Potestivo and Associates announced earlier this month that Erica Julian has been promoted to be the firm's new foreclosure manager.

Foreclosure starts increased nationwide for the third consecutive month but are down 20 percent from last year, according to Black Knight Financial Services "First Look" at mortgage data for July 2014 released on August 26. Overall inventory fell by 1.65 percent from June down to 935,000 in July. The overall inventory is down 34 percent from July 2013 and has hit its lowest level since March 2008.

Mortgage note holders in North Carolina can no longer voluntarily dismiss more than one non-judicial foreclosure without being banned from filing additional non-judicial foreclosures, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled earlier this week.

Foreclosure sales are way down nationwide for the second quarter of 2014 with close to 115,000 reported, according to HOPE NOW's Q2 2014 data released earlier in the week. It was the lowest number of foreclosure sales reported for any quarter since HOPE NOW began tracking foreclosure data in 2007.

Approximately 421,000 homeowners used various non-foreclosure solutions from mortgage servicers in the second quarter of 2014, according to recently released Q2 2014 data from HOPE NOW, a private sector alliance between various players in the mortgage industry. The number of non-foreclosure solutions in Q2 was almost quadruple the number of foreclosure sales for the same period (115,000), according to HOPE NOW.

Ohio ranks fifth in the nation in foreclosure activity in July even after a 24 percent decrease from a year ago, according to recently released data from RealtyTrac.

Hutchens Law Firm, a leading default service law office based in North Carolina, announced that it has opened an office in Columbia, South Carolina. The new Columbia office is the fourth for Hutchens Law Firm and the first in South Carolina.