Banks push fewer homes into foreclosure in August

Big banks pushed fewer U.S. households into foreclosure for the seventh consecutive month in August, a real estate firm reported, though repossessions of properties already ensnared in the process hit a record.

The continued convergence of the two trends — fewer notices of default filed on homes but more properties sold at courthouse steps — indicates that major lenders are meting out foreclosures in a systematic way so as not to flood the housing market with a wave of steeply discounted properties, RealtyTrac said.

James J. Saccacio, chief executive of RealtyTrac, called the trends “a clear indication that the clogged foreclosure pipeline is being carefully managed on both ends by lenders and servicers.”

A total of 94,469 properties received default notices in August, a 1% decrease from July and a 30% decrease from August 2009. On the other end of the process, lenders seized 95,364 properties in August, the highest monthly total in the history of the Irvine-based RealtyTrac’s report, an increase of 3% from July and a 25% jump from August 2009.

Lenders are working through a backlog of properties that developed last year after many foreclosures were frozen by national and regional moratoriums and slowed by trial mortgage modification attempts. California had the fourth-highest foreclosure rate in the country and, in part because of the state’s sheer size, accounted for 20% of all properties receiving any kind of foreclosure filing in August.

alejandro.lazo@latimes.com