Number of Court Executions up

At the end of April I reported that the number of Orders of Notice recorded was up considerably when compared to the same month last year. There were 97 orders of notice in April 2010 and 115 in April 2011, a jump of 19%. Today I looked at some other document types that are indicators of bad times. Tax liens, both state and federal, were about the same as a year ago. But executions, the document a court issues to a plaintiff to collect the judgment won in a law suit, were up more than 50% (73 in April 2010 and 112 in April 2011).

I scanned through the recent executions looking for any patterns. Most were from Citibank with average indebtedness in excess of $10,000. There were also a few other giant national lenders such as Wells Fargo and Capital ONE in this group, but Citi had the most by far. Next was a group of third party collection outfits with names like "Portfolio Recovery Associates" and "Advantage Assets." The execution amount in these cases averaged between $8,000 and $12,000. Then there were a bunch of retailers like Lowe's, Sears and Best Buy. The amount owed to them was closer to $2500 to $4000.

This increase in executions provides further evidence that consumer credit remains a problem.