West Coast States witness drop in foreclosures

By Stevie Duffin Updated on 9/25/2013

Majority of the states on the West Coast have experienced sizeable drops in foreclosure filings in April, prompting experts to label the trend "surprising".  The reason has been that banks had months to fix robo-signing issues that slowed the number of filings in late 2010.

The only West Coast state that saw an increase in foreclusre filings las month was Oregon. Filings decreased in Arizona, California, Nevada and Washington. California, one of the states that was hardest hit during the housing meltdown, actually saw filings drop to a three-year low.

In Arizona, notice of trustee sale filings fell almost 28% in April and declined 41.5% from a year earlier. Meanwhile, foreclosure sales fell 22.2% last month.

California witnessed the notice of default filings decrease 25.8% between March and April, while notice of trustee filings decreased 10.9%. Compared to 2010, notice of default filings in California plummeted 28% and notice of trustee sale filings dropped 31.2%. Moreover, foreclosure sale cancellations increased 27% in April compared to the previous month.

In Nevada, notice of default filings fell 17.8% in April, which is the lowest point since August 2009. Additionally, notice of trustee sale filings fell 23.7% from March. Washington noted a 12.1% monthly drop in notice of trustee sale filings in April and a 25.4% decrease from the earlier year.

Oregon went against the trend, with foreclosure filings up across the entire State. Notices of defaults increased 236.2% between March and April as Bank of America's subsidiary ReconTrust filed 2,840 NODs, increasing the number of total default filings in the state for the month.