The Provo-Orem area is ranked No. 31 in foreclosure-related filings among more than 200 areas nationwide, a new report shows.
The Utah County community is the highest-ranked Utah metro area on the list, with 3,168 properties -- approximately 2.2 percent of all housing units-- receiving a filing in the first half of the year. That's up 129 percent from the same time period last year.
The Salt Lake metro area was at No. 58, with Ogden-Clearfield at No. 59 in the report by RealtyTrac, which monitors a wide range of filings from default notices -- in which homeowners are simply behind on their payments but not yet in danger of losing their properties -- to notices that the bank is taking possession of the property.
In the Salt Lake metro area, 5,322 properties -- 1.4 percent of all housing units -- received a foreclosure-related filing in the first half of the year, up 63.2 percent from the same time period last year. In Ogden-Clearfield, 2,397 homes, or 1.4 percent of all homes, received some type of filing. That's up a whopping 82 percent from last year.
All three Utah metro areas have a foreclosure rate that is a bit higher than the national average. Nationally, 1.2 percent of all housing units received a foreclosure notice in the first half.
But the Utah metro areas still stack up favorably to a number of other cities. In No. 1-ranked Las Vegas, 7.5 percent of properties received at least one foreclosure filing in the first half of the year. In Cape Coral-Fort Myers, Fla., at No. 2, 7.2 percent of housing units got notices.
Two years into Utah's real estate downturn, defaults and foreclosures, once super-low, are climbing. With fewer sales and price declines, it has become more difficult for homeowners in financial trouble to sell their properties quickly enough and at a high enough price to cover their mortgage obligations. The fact that Utah's economy is deteriorating and the state is losing jobs on a year-over-year basis doesn't help, even though neither decline is as steep as those in most other parts of the country.
