US home foreclosures drop first time in four years

US home foreclosures have dropped for the first time in four years as the economy recovered from a brutal recession triggered by a mortgage meltdown, a real estate data company said Thursday.

Foreclosure filings -- default notices, auctions and bank repossessions -- were reported on 333,837 properties in April, a nine percent decrease from the previous month and a two percent decrease from last year, RealtyTrac said.

This was the first year-over-year drop since the company started tracking annual foreclosure rates in January 2006, nearly two years before the US plunged into recession resulting from a home mortgage crisis.

"There were two important milestones in the April numbers that show foreclosure activity has begun to plateau -- but at a very high level that will not drop off in the near future," said James Saccacio, RealtyTrac's chief executive.

"April was the first month in the history of our report with an annual decrease in US foreclosure activity. Secondly, bank repossessions hit a record monthly high for the report even while default notices dropped substantially on a monthly and annual basis," he said.

The company expected a similar pattern for most of this year.

Some 92,432 properties were repossessed by lenders in April -- an increase of one percent from the previous month and 45 percent from 2009.

Bank repossessions were less than one percent above their previous peak of 92,182 in December 2009.

Nevada, Arizona, Florida were hit hard by the mortgage crisis.

Nevada posted the nation's highest state foreclosure rate for the 40th straight month, with one in every 69 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing in April -- more than five times the national average.

Source: http://www.france24.com/en/20100513-us-home-foreclosures-drop-first-time-four-years