Lenders initiated fewer foreclosures in Massachusetts in May than they did a year ago and in the prior month, according to a new report from ""the Warren Group"":http://www.thewarrengroup.com, a Boston-based real estate research firm.
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Foreclosures petitions, which mark the first step of the foreclosure process in the Bay State, fell 9.4 percent from May 2009 and were also down 13.2 percent compared to April 2010. A total of 2,110 petitions to foreclose were filed statewide last May, bringing the cumulative tally to 11,118 for the first five months of this year.
While new foreclosures subsided last month, the number of completed foreclosures in Massachusetts more than doubled compared to a year earlier.
[COLUMN_BREAK]For the month of May, the Warren Group tracked 1,283 foreclosure deeds, which are recorded when a foreclosure has been finalized. That's a 119.7 percent surge from the 584 foreclosures completed in May 2009, but it represents a 6.7 percent decline from the month prior. So far this year, 6,107 properties have been foreclosed on in Massachusetts.
""A year ago, we were seeing the opposite trend in Massachusetts,"" said Timothy M. Warren Jr., CEO of the Warren Group. ""Foreclosure petitions were increasing as unemployment grew, but foreclosure deeds were declining because a state law that went into effect in 2008 delayed foreclosure proceedings. We're now seeing the foreclosures that were started a year earlier being completed.""
The Warren Group also reported that the number of advertised auction notices more than doubled to reach 2,858 in May compared to 1,378 during the same month last year. Last month's auction notices were flat compared to April.
A total of 13,969 auction notices from January through May were tracked by the Warren Group, a 139.7 percent jump from 5,828 from the prior year.