Foreclosure filings drop across most of the West Coast

Most West Coast states experienced significant drops in foreclosure filings last month, prompting ForeclosureRadar to call the trend “surprising” since banks had months to fix robo-signing issues that slowed the number of filings in late 2010. The only West Coast state that saw filings go up in April was Oregon. Foreclosure filings fell in Arizona, California, Nevada and Washington. California, one of the states hit the hardest during the housing meltdown, saw filings drop to a three-year low. “Banks have had time to resolve robo-signing issues, so we should be seeing exactly the opposite results, with lenders starting to catch up from recent delays,” said Sean O’Toole, CEO of ForeclosureRadar.com. Instead, in Arizona, notice of trustee sale filings fell nearly 28% last month from March and declined 41.5% from a year earlier. Meanwhile, foreclosure sales in the Grand Canyon State fell 22.2% in April. California saw the number of  notice of default filings fall 25.8% between March and April, while notice of trustee filings fell 10.9%. When compared to last year, notice of default filings in California plummeted 28% and notice of trustee sale filings dropped 31.2%. In addition, foreclosure sale cancellations increased 27% in April when compared to the previous month. In Nevada, notice of default filings fell 17.8% in April, reaching the lowest point since August 2009. In addition, notice of trustee sale filings plummeted 23.7% from March. Washington noted a 12.1% monthly drop in notice of trustee sale filings in April and a 25.4% decline from a year earlier. Oregon was the only state going against trend, with foreclosure filings up across the Beaver State. Notices of defaults grew 236.2% between March and April as Bank of America’s subsidiary ReconTrust filed 2,840 default notices, buoying the number of total default filings in the state for the month. Write to: Kerri Panchuk.