US Foreclosures Increase 55%, Bank Seizures Rise to Record

By Dan Levy

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Banks repossessed almost three times as many U.S. homes in July than a year earlier and the number of homes receiving a foreclosure notice jumped 55 percent as more homeowners defaulted on their mortgages in the face of falling prices.

Bank seizures rose 184 percent to 77,295, the steepest increase since reporting began in January 2005, RealtyTrac, an Irvine, California-based seller of foreclosure data, said today in a statement. More than 272,000 properties, or one in 464 U.S. households, got a default notice, was warned of a pending auction or were foreclosed on. Nevada, California and Florida had the highest rates.

``It's getting worse,'' Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac's executive vice president for marketing, said in an interview. ``The number of properties that have been foreclosed on by the banks and still haven't sold is the highest we've ever seen.''

Total foreclosure filings rose 8 percent from the previous month to 272,171, just shy of the record 273,001 set in May, said RealtyTrac, which has a database of more than 1.5 million properties. Through July, 775,244 properties were owned by banks, compared with about 445,000 for all of 2007 and about 224,000 in 2006, Sharga said. Read more >>