Today the Alaska Housing and Finance Corporation completed the first quarter of 2011 report on Notices of Defaults and Trustee Deed foreclosure action. In Anchorage, Fairbanks and the Mat-Su there was a fairly significant reduction in the number of notices of default in the first quarter of 2011 compared to the same three months of 2010. Anchorage trustee deed filings were virtually the same in the first quarter compared to last year, but Fairbanks and the Mat-Su were both lower in 2011.
The Notices of Default are based on legal property descriptions and may contain multiple units of housing. They do not distinguish between commercial structures, residential structures and land. Statewide there were 548 notices of default in the first quarter of 2011 compared to 749 in the first quarter of 2010. The quarterly average number of notices was 654 in 2008, then rose to a high of 864 in 2009, and declined to 700 in 2010. The complete report gives detail for the largest communities in Alaska and graphs the trend back to 2000. Anchorage notices declined from 354 in the first quarter of 2010 to 237 in the first quarter of 2011. Fairbanks notices declined from 100 to 93 during the same first quarter comparison, while the Mat-Su fell from 152 to 109.
Notices of Default are a leading indicator of upcoming foreclosure activity. This can be tracked by the filing of Trustee Deeds, which represent the completion of the foreclosure process a minimum of 90 days later. There were 309 Trustee Deeds filed statewide in the first quarter of 2011 compared to 361 in the first three months of 2010. The quarterly average number of Trustee Deeds was 283 in 2008, 312 in 2009, and 347 in 2010.
There were 120 Trustee Deed filings in Anchorage during the first quarter of 2011. This was right on par with 2010 when there were 117 first quarter filings and an average of 119 each quarter during the year. In Fairbanks there were 43 filings in the first quarter of 2011 compared to 55 in the first quarter of 2010 and 56 on average per quarter for the year. The Mat-Su had 64 filings in the first quarter of 2011 compared to 104 in the first three months of 2010 and 91 on average per quarter for the year.
Looking back at all the data from 2000 to 2010 there were a total of 21,666 notices of default filed in Alaska and 10,422 resulted in the issuance of Trustee Deeds. Therefore, roughly half (52%) of notices of default were cured or restructured in some way before a foreclosure was completed. Over the last 11 years there was an annual average of 1,968 Notices of Default statewide. The last four years have all been higher than the long-term average, which is partially explained with inherent growth in the economy. However, 2009 was clearly the worst year with rates 76% higher than average. 2010 showed an improvement to 42% above average and the first quarter of 2011 is about 11% higher than the historical quarterly average.
The total number of foreclosure actions in the last three years has also been higher than the average since 2000, but the percentage of notices of default that turn into trustee deed filings is getting smaller. For example, in 2000 there were 1,484 defaults and 1,066 trustee deeds. Therefore, only 28% were cured or restructured compared to an average over the decade of 52%. In 2009 the comparable number was 36% and 49% in 2010.
Click Here to view a copy of the three page report. It contains several graphs of this data which show an increase in this activity in 2007 and the beginning of a decline trend in 2010.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.