The latest tracking of foreclosure statistics confirmed the recent trend of lower numbers of foreclosure actions being taken by banks in Florida and other regions with higher-than-average populations and foreclosure activities. Unfortunately, the reasons previously seen for the downturn in numbers were still the primary reasons for the lower number of foreclosures, namely that the banks have so many foreclosure cases already pending that they are taking longer to get around to foreclosing on homeowners who are in serious default on their mortgage loans.

For the first half of 2011, nearly 85 percent of metro areas with more than 200,000 people had drops in foreclosure rates when compared to 2010.

Fort Lauderdale "stop foreclosure" lawyers have seen that in the largest 211 metro areas in the U.S., 178 of them saw fewer foreclosure actions. Florida had metro areas in the top twenty when it came to decreases in foreclosure numbers.

Mostly, the reality behind the numbers is bad. The decreases are really due to bottlenecks in getting old foreclosure cases resolved. Some of the news is good, though. In some cases, the banks are taking longer to commence foreclosure proceedings because they are actually working with homeowners to try and come to an agreement on a mortgage modification that would allow the homeowner to stay in their home. The trend seems to be for more banks to try to seek modifications in good faith, which was unusually rare when the foreclosure crisis broke out in the last year or two.

Source: USA Today "Foreclosure activity down in most metro areas" 7/28/2011