Foreclosures fall, but Las Vegas still leads nation

By Steve Green

Thursday, Sept. 10, 2009 | 8 a.m.

Residential foreclosure activity declined last month in Nevada and Las Vegas -- but these markets continued to lead the nation in RealtyTrac's foreclosure lists.

And with Nevada unemployment running at 12.5 percent in July, Reno joined Las Vegas on the list of the 10 U.S. cities with the highest foreclosure rates.

Nevada's real estate market was initially hit in 2007 by homeowners defaulting on subprime mortgages. Lately it has been hampered by the high unemployment rate -- with joblessness driven by declines in construction and reduced visitation to hotel-casinos related to the U.S. recession.

Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac on Thursday issued its August 2009 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows foreclosure filings -- default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions -- were reported on 358,471 U.S. properties during the month.

That's a decrease of less than 1 percent from the previous month, but still an increase of nearly 18 percent from August 2008. The report also shows one in every 357 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing in August.

"The August report demonstrates that there is still an ample supply of properties filling the foreclosure pipeline even while the outflow of bank-owned REO properties onto the resale market is being more carefully regulated," James Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, said in a statement. "After hitting a high for the year in July, REOs dropped 13 percent in August, but we also saw a record high number of properties either entering default or being scheduled for a public foreclosure auction for the first time."

With one in every 62 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing in August, Nevada continued to document the nation's highest state foreclosure rate despite an 8 percent decrease in foreclosure activity from the previous month. A total of 17,902 Nevada properties received a foreclosure filing during the month, an increase of 53 percent from August 2008.

Nevada was followed by Florida, California, Arizona, Michigan, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Georgia and Illinois on the list of states with high foreclosure rates.

In terms of raw foreclosure numbers, California led the nation with 92,326 properties receiving a foreclosure filing in August and was followed by Florida, Michigan and Nevada.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 14,940 properties in Las Vegas in August, one in every 53 housing units -- more than 6.7 times the national average and the highest foreclosure rate among metro areas with a population of at least 200,000. The city's foreclosure activity was down 11 percent from the previous month, but still up 48 percent from August 2008.

With one in every 86 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing in August, the Reno-Sparks metro area joined Las Vegas in the top 10, posting the seventh highest metro foreclosure rate.

Six California metro areas documented foreclosure rates among the top 10 in August. Stockton posted the nation's second highest metro foreclosure rate, followed by Merced at No. 3, Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario at No. 4, Vallejo-Fairfield at No. 5, Modesto at No. 6 and Bakersfield at No. 10.

Two Florida metro areas documented foreclosure rates among the top 10: Orlando-Kissimmee at No. 8 and Cape Coral-Fort Myers at No. 9.