Foreclosures creeping up

The statistics after three weeks of April are trending negative. The number of deeds and mortgages are both down from the same time a year ago, deeds by 16% and mortgages by 12%. Worst of all, orders of notice, the document that signals the start of a new foreclosure, are up by 29%, rising from 69 to 89. Only foreclosure deeds are down (by 49%) but the significance of that is diminished by the previously mentioned rise in orders of notice. Speaking of which, I scrolled through the 89 that have been recorded thus far this month and found that the single largest entity recording them has been Wells Fargo. This tends to corroborate the prediction of the pessimists over the winter that foreclosures were only down temporarily due to a quiet freeze by many national lenders as they worked to resolve paperwork flaws in their delinquent mortgage portfolios. Unfortunately, the most recent statistics suggest that was an accurate assessment.