Pa. foreclosures outpace U.S. rate

HOME foreclosure activity across Pennsylvania has jumped this year because of a spike in mortgage defaults, according to an industry report released Thursday.

Lenders issued 1,036 default notices - starting the foreclosure process - to homeowners in the seven-county region in the January-March quarter, said RealtyTrac Inc., a housing-marketresearch firm in Irvine, Calif. The filings were almost triple the 370 notices sent to homeowners in the October-December period, and more than double the 410 from January-March 2011.

The spike in foreclosure actions began when attorneys general in every state but Oklahoma reached a $25 billion settlement in February over allegations that the nation's five largest mortgage lenders had illegally foreclosed on some homeowners.

"Banks were not doing as many foreclosures because they had been found to be doing them improperly," said Dan Sullivan, a foreclosure-prevention specialist at Action-Housing Inc. "But once the settlement was behind them, banks opened up the floodgates and filed all these [default] notices."

In Pennsylvania, the number of default notices last quarter jumped to 5,839, 55 percent more than the 3,758 in the October-December quarter, and 75 percent more than the 3,346 in first-quarter 2011.

Higher foreclosure activity in Pennsylvania contrasted with the trend nationwide. Total U.S. foreclosure activity so far this year, including bank repossessions and sheriff sales, fell to the lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2007, RealtyTrac said.