Home foreclosures still hit Utah metro areas
SALT LAKE CITY — More than 75 percent of major metropolitan areas in the U.S. are posting high foreclosure rates, according to a midyear report from foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac.
The Provo-Orem area was Utah's hardest-hit metro in the first half of 2010, with about 3,000 foreclosure-related filings by the end of June, the RealtyTrac report said. That number is an 8.37 percent improvement from the last half of 2009.
Salt Lake City was 36th on the list, with more than 8,000 properties undergoing foreclosure. That amounts to about two homes for every 48.
Ogden-Clearfield also made the chart, which was made up of metropolitan areas with populations of 200,000 or more. In Weber and Davis Counties, about 2,600 foreclosure filings have entered the system this year.
Despite the disheartening figures, RealtyTrac points out that foreclosure activity decreased in nine of the 10 metro areas with the highest foreclosure rates.
Four states — Florida, California, Nevada and Arizona — accounted for all of the top 20 metro foreclosure rates.
"While we're seeing early signs that foreclosure activity may have peaked in some of the hardest-hit markets, foreclosures continued to rise in three-quarters of the nation's metropolitan areas in the first half of the year," James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac, said in a news release.
If job growth doesn't occur and foreclosure prevention efforts fail, there will be similar levels of foreclosures and low housing prices in the near future, he said.
e-mail: rpalmer@desnews.com
