MOUNT VERNON — The number of new foreclosure filings in Knox County during the first quarter of this year are on course to surpass the corresponding figure for last year.
There were 104 foreclosure filings January through March, according to the Knox County Clerk of Courts. In 2007, there were 79 filings during the same three months. The court reported 288 filings for all of 2007, compared to 259 in 2006 and 219 in 2005.
Clerk of Court’s data differs slightly from filing data released by the Ohio Supreme Court, which reports 365 foreclosures for 2007, a 55 percent increase compared to the number of filings in 2003. The data shows 298 in 2006 and 265 in 2005.
Mary Jo Hawkins, Knox County Clerk of Courts, said the Ohio Supreme Court and the county clerk of courts data differs slightly due to differences in counting standards. The county, for instance, does not count foreclosure cases involving bankruptcy, which it considers to be on hold.
A recent report by Policy Matters Ohio, a Cleveland-based research firm, ranked Knox County the lowest in the state in terms of growth in new foreclosure filings between 1995 and 2007, but 19th in the state in terms of growth from 2006 to 2007. Filings grew by 17.4 percent in the 2006-07 period and 79.5 percent from 1995 to 2007.
According to the report, Knox County ranked 40th in the state in the number of foreclsoure filings per person — 5.9 filings per every 1,000 people, based on a 2007 population estimate of 58,961. Ohio, with its estimated 2007 population of 11,466,917, had 7.4 filings per 1,000 people.
The same reports states that the 84,751 filings in 2007 showed a 6.7 percent increase compared to the 79,435 in 2006. Filings grew by double digit rates in 39 of Ohio’s 88 counties; statewide, they have more than quintupled since 1995. All but a dozen Ohio counties have seen at least a quadrupling in the number of foreclosure filings since 1995.
There is no perfect measure of foreclosure, according to Policy Matters Ohio, and no exact measure of the number of families that lose their home. The report adds that filing data does not provide a complete picture of the foreclosures, since it includes nonmortgage filings and double filings.
“Not all filings lead to actual foreclosures, in which borrowers lose title to their property,” the report states. “On the other hand, filing statistics do not cover all cases in which homeowners lose their property, such as cases in which they give the title back to the lender and walk away from the home. Filing data is the best source of information to compare recent levels of foreclosure activity in the state and among Ohio’s counties.”
The Policy Matters report goes on to say that news reports often cite much higher numbers, sometimes citing data from RealtyTrac, a marketer of foreclosed properties, that includes documents from different stages of the process, which shows a much larger number of foreclosures than the court data.
In January, RealtyTrak reported 153,196 overall foreclosures in Ohio in 2007, but also stated that 89,979 Ohioans entered some stage of foreclosure during the year.
Foreclosure filings rose by 57 percent in March compared to the same month last year and rose by 5 percent compared to February, according to a RealtyTrak report released this week. The same report predicts more defaults and foreclosures in the third and fourth quarters of 2008, because a large number of adjustable-rate mortgages will reset to higher rates in May and June.
