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Foreclosures up 55% in USA

Thursday, 14 August 2008 12:00 AM

The number of mortgage deals foreclosed by banks in America has increased by 55 per cent over the last year according to new statistics.

The figures from analysts Realtytrac provide a stark illustration of the problems faced by the market, which has been ravaged by the credit crunch for the last year.

More than 272,000 people in the US received a foreclosure notice in July, the figures highlight.

Some 77,000 properties were repossessed by banks.

As a result, a staggering 17 per cent of the homes offered for sale on the American market are foreclosure properties.

Among the biggest losers were Florida and California, traditional investment destinations for Brits looking for property abroad, both of which had among the highest rate of foreclosures, figures showed.

The figures are significantly worse than the picture presented by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) for the domestic market.

In the UK some 18,900 homes were taken into possession by lenders during the first half of the year, up by 48 per cent when compared with the same period of last year, when 12,800 homes were repossessed, CML figures show.

While both the UK and US have been impacted by the credit crunch, subprime borrowers in America have been far more likely to fall into arrears and default on mortgages.

Under the American legal system foreclosure is the proceeding in which a mortgagee of a property obtains a court ordered terminating a mortgagor's equitable right of redemption.

Chris O'Toole

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