Foreclosures (filing of a Notice of Default) in Ventura County have been running about 30 – 40 per day, but all of a sudden it dropped to just a handful a day. What’s happened? Look at these numbers taken from Foreclosure List Service.com for September – see the drop off starting on September 8th?

• Sept 2 – 61
• Sept 3 – 27
• Sept 4 – 26
• Sept 5 – 41
• Sept 8 – 4
• Sept 9 – 2
• Sept 10 – 1
• Sept 11 – 1
• Sept 12 – 2
• Sept 15 – 2
• Sept 16 – 2
• Sept 17 – 13

No – foreclosures haven’t really “slowed down”. What HAS happened is that a new state law, Senate Bill 1137 has kicked in, forcing lenders to prove they have attempted to communicate with the borrower concerning the foreclosure and any attempts made to mitigate that foreclosure (loan modification, etc).

This will merely slow down the foreclosure process, not stop it.  To see how the foreclosure activity has really kicked in this year, click here to see a list of the number of foreclosures per month going back to the mid 1990s for Ventura County.