Foreclosures rose 75% in 2007

The number of Utah foreclosures fell 25.9 percent from 2006 and slightly more than 16 percent from 2005. Only five other states saw their foreclosure numbers drop last year: South Carolina's rate decreased 27.6 percent, New Mexico's declined 26 percent, Oklahoma's dropped 12.8 percent, Pennsylvania's fell 11 percent, and Texas' declined a modest 4.6 percent.

Nationwide, as many as 750,000 homes will go into foreclosure this year, "coming on at distressed prices" and adding to the supply of available homes, said Rick Sharga, executive vice president for marketing at RealtyTrac. The seller of foreclosure information, based in Irvine, Calif., has a database of more than 1 million U.S. properties.

The median price of an existing single-family home dropped 1.8 percent in 2007, according to the National Association of Realtors. The Case-Shiller index showed a drop in 17 cities from a year earlier, and all 20 cities showed a decline from a month earlier. The group's 10-city composite index, which has a longer history, fell a record 8.4 percent in the 12 months ended in November.

New home sales dropped 26 percent for the year, the most since records began in 1963, the Commerce Department said Monday.

December had 215,749 foreclosure filings, the fifth straight month with more than 200,000 filings, RealtyTrac said. The fourth-quarter total of 642,150 filings was the most since the company began records in January 2005.

Nevada had the highest state foreclosure rate for 2007, with 3.4 percent of households entering some stage of foreclosure during the year, more than triple the national rate. Florida had the second-highest rate with 2 percent.

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