Foreclosures are up again

Tarrant County foreclosure postings for the first 11 months of the year are 20 percent ahead of the same period a year ago, according to figures released Thursday by Foreclosure Listing Service.

Lenders posted 1,348 Tarrant County homes for the November foreclosure auction, 7 percent more than a year ago, to bring the yearly total to 14,613, according to figures released Thursday by the Addison-based service.

The increase in postings is not expected to subside anytime soon, said George Roddy, president of the Foreclosure Listing Service.

What’s happening

The tightening of financing for home loans and the ban on sellers’ ability to contribute to the transaction through down-payment assistance programs have made it more difficult to sell a home. At the same time, the lenders, nonprofit groups and the government are introducing programs to stem the number of foreclosures.

These elements may work against each other to prevent a spike in foreclosure postings, Roddy said. Those most likely to be hurt by the recent economic changes are cash-strapped sellers who need to unload their house immediately. Sellers need to be prepared to wait.

"If they have got to sell their house, they are going to be in a real bind," he said. "The market has changed a lot."

What it means

North Texas is doing better than most areas. The Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area added 68,000 jobs between July 2007 and 2008, the most of any metro area in the country, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Job growth is a key driver for the health of the home-sales market.

"Our market is like an island unto itself," Roddy said. "We have not seen the degradation of values that other states haves seen."

The postings are down slightly from the 1,380 homes posted for the October auction.

Across the area

For the four-county area that includes Collin, Tarrant, Denton and Dallas counties, foreclosure postings were relatively flat from a year ago. The 4,269 postings are up only 1 percent from a year ago.

The dour news about the economy in recent weeks seems to have piqued interest from people who want to learn about buying foreclosures, Roddy said. His company offers classes that teach about buying foreclosures.

With the stock market down, he believes that some people are pulling their money out of equity investments and putting it in something tangible, like a house.