Foreclosure rates are down. That sounds like good news, but the reason it isn't good is that the rates are not down because fewer homeowners are in danger of losing their homes. The main reason the rates are down is that there are so many foreclosure cases already pending that the big banks are taking longer to get around to foreclosing on people who are behind on their mortgage payments.

Many expert observers feel that the delays in processing foreclosures will make it even more difficult for the housing market to recover, which could lead to more foreclosures.

In some parts of the country, foreclosure cases are taking more than two years to be finalized, and that is just counting the time from the first notice from the bank, not starting from the first few missed mortgage payments.

In actual numbers, April saw 69,532 homes foreclosed. That was a 5 percent reduction from the March numbers and was 25 percent less than the number of homes foreclosed in April of 2010.

The number of homeowners who received an initial notice of default (in other words, that were just beginning the foreclosure process), was 63,422, a 14 percent drop from March and a 39 percent drop from April of last year.

Fort Lauderdale foreclosure lawyers have noted that last fall's "robo-signing" scandal caused many big banks to revisit their foreclosure filings in Florida and elsewhere. Since most of those cases eventually moved forward again, the re-examination simply caused a general delay in finalizing foreclosures.

Some experts estimate that there are more than 3.5 million homes with delinquent mortgage payments, that could go into foreclosure. The longer it takes for this backlog to move through the system (or, hopefully, avoid foreclosure through a mortgage modification or through the homeowner's increased income), the longer it will take for the market to recover.

Source: Associated Press "Pace of foreclosures slowed further in April" 5/14/2011