Foreclosures slow in NL County

The good news for the region: Foreclosure filings last year fell 12 percent in New London County compared to the year before. The bad news: They're still pretty high.

The county recorded 1,326 foreclosure filings last year, compared with 1,511 the year before, according to numbers released Thursday by California-based RealtyTrac.

The region's rate of one foreclosure filing for every 88 housing units last year left it in better shape than the rest of the state. New London County ranked sixth out of eight counties in the state in foreclosure rate, and the region had about half the rate of foreclosure proceedings than in the rest of the country.

Still, the numbers are up more than 55 percent from where they were in 2007. And they are six times the level of foreclosures reached in 2006.

Over the past year, said real estate experts, a good number of distressed properties have been sold, many of the transactions spurred by a first-time homebuyers tax credit.

"A lot of it's been absorbed," said John Bolduc, chief executive officer of the Eastern Connecticut Association of Realtors, addressing the problem of foreclosures statewide. "But there's more to come. It'll last probably another two years."

The state ranked No. 21 last year in the percentage of homes having gone through foreclosure proceedings

Connecticut was one of only nine states - joining Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Indiana, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio and Tennessee as well as the District of Columbia - whose foreclosure numbers came down during the past year.

While the rate is an improvement from 2008's year-end numbers, foreclosure filings in the state are still up nearly 66 percent from 2007.

While Connecticut has been plagued by growing numbers of foreclosures over the past two years, the state's rate of distressed properties is still nearly a full percentage point below the 2.2 percent national average.

RealtyTrac pointed out that other states have felt a much bigger impact from the foreclosure crisis. Just four states - California, Florida, Arizona and Illinois - accounted for more than half of all foreclosure notices nationwide last year, the firm said, and Nevada recorded a foreclosure rate of more than 10 percent.

Nationwide foreclosure filings hit a record 2.8 million last year, according to RealtyTrac, up 21 percent from the year before and more than double 2007's numbers.

"As bad as the 2009 numbers are, they probably would have been worse if not for legislative and industry-related delays in processing delinquent loans," said James J. Saccacio, chief executive of RealtyTrac, in a statement.

Saccacio pointed to factors that slowed processing of foreclosures toward the end of the year, including trial loan modifications, legislation in various states that forced delays and a backlog of cases.

"Many of those cases will end up in the foreclosure process in 2010 and beyond," he said.