Foreclosure Numbers Show Idaho’s Upward Trend

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Foreclosure activity rose last month in Idaho, but the housing market's overall trend is one of improvement.

Idaho saw a 9 percent uptick in foreclosure filings from April to May, according to housing data provider RealtyTrac. That mirrors the 9 percent rise in foreclosure activity seen nationally over the same period.  RealtyTrac says foreclosure activity is picking up in the wake of the landmark, multi-billion dollar mortgage settlement reached earlier this year.

The bigger news for Idaho is that the state has seen a much greater than average decrease in foreclosure activity over the last year.  While the number of foreclosure filings has fallen by 4 percent nationally since May 2011, Idaho’s foreclosure filings dropped by 44 percent over the same period.

RealtyTrac’s report notes that states like Idaho that rely on a nonjudicial foreclosure process (meaning, basically, they don’t require lenders to prove in court that the borrower is in default) have watched their foreclosure activity fall by 20 percent over the last year. Judicial foreclosure states, meanwhile, posted a 26 percent rise during the same period.

As StateImpact explained in an earlier post, the foreclosure process tends to move more quickly in nonjudicial foreclosure states.  Therefore, those states appear to have cleared their backlogs of distressed homes more quickly.  In the Treasure Valley, for example, home prices have bottomed out and are now beginning to come back.