Pima County Recorders Office

Foreclosure notices dip to near 3-year low

Fewer than 700 property owners in Pima County - 693 to be precise - received notice in June that their loans were in default.

That's the first time the number has dropped below 700 since November 2008. It's also the fifth straight month that fewer property owners received notice their loans were in default compared with the same period last year, numbers from the Pima County Recorder's Office show.

But it's still far higher than the number of foreclosure notices issued when home prices were peaking. In 2006, about 240 notices were issued each month.

The notices start the foreclosure process by telling borrowers their loans are in default. They don't mean for sure that homeowners will lose their property to foreclosure.

A decrease in foreclosures is essential to a recovery in housing prices, said Marshall Vest, a University of Arizona economist. Still, Vest is guarded in his optimism about the statistics.

"I don't think we're out of the woods by any means," he said Tuesday. "Housing prices are still declining."

Those drops in housing prices fuel even more foreclosures, Vest said. Also, banks have come under increased scrutiny when taking back houses, and that could be slowing down the process, Vest said.

However, most buyers who financed home purchases with adjustable-rate mortgages at the peak have already seen their interest reset. So many of the foreclosures brought on by those shifting rates already have occurred, Vest said. Some are still in the pipeline, though.

At the other end of the foreclosure process, sales of distressed properties stayed high through June, the Recorder's Office data show. There were 632 foreclosure sales last month recorded as trustee deeds.

That's down from June 2010, but higher than the monthly average for last year.

On one hand, those in the real estate industry say such sales are crucial to a recovery in housing because it means the market is working through distressed properties. But it also means families are losing homes to foreclosure.

"The problem is, the longer this stuff sits out there, the more it drags down the market," said Kevin Kaplan, Long Realty's vice president of marketing and technology.

For that reason, it's better that distressed properties get in the hands of new owners, because as long as foreclosures sit on the market, they continue to weigh down prices, Kaplan said.

Using data from the Tucson Association of Realtors' Multiple Listing Service, Long Realty compiled statistics that show 44 percent of home sales in June were of bank-owned properties. Those sales had a median price of $95,000, dragging the overall median down to $125,877.

Pima County Recorders Office soft pedals voter fraud in South ...

Chris Roads, Assistant Pima County Recorder, gave a statement to the Arizona Daily Star but has yet to return phone calls to other elected representatives that have inquired about the fraud. His cavalier response that makes things appear that all that will be done is to replace the ballots.  Once again, government in Tucson is refusing to hold people accountable. Most of the allegations appear to be aimed specifically at Garcia. “So far, the county investigation and interviews of residents has not revealed anyone who thinks their ballot was marked differently than they requested, he said. But as a precaution, the office has sequestered all early ballots from South Tucson in case problems are detected, and anyone who would like to cast a new ballot may do so. In that case, only the second ballot would be counted” said Roads. Located just south of downtown Tucson, the City of South Tucson, is a one square mile community within metropolitan Tucson. The city proudly reflects the slogan, The Pueblo within a City, by retaining the cultural background, language and beliefs of its people. The city boundaries are 25th Street on the north, the Union Pacific Railroad tracks on the east, 40th Street and Benson Highway on the south, and 12th Avenue on the west. It resides within Legislative District 29 and Congressional District 7. Precincts 134 and 47 appear to be the effected precincts.

State Senator Don Shooter has a bill that he is trying to get heard in committee SB1412. The house Judiciary, chaired by Eddie Farnsworth (R -22),committee refuses to hear the voter integrity bill but the Senator is trying to move it through the Government Committee. Senator Shooter is trying to get speaker Kirk Adams to assign it. Sources close to the House Judiciary committee say “Farnsworth is being difficult , he just doesn’t have a grasp of the seriousness of voter integrity”. http://www.azleg.gov/legtext/50leg/1r/bills/sb1412p.pdf

Great story James!!!

Tim cracks me up. I’ll bet he just can’t wait for “Comprehensive Immigration Reform”. After all, Illegal Aliens are just undocumented Democrats as the saying goes, lol. Just another way for the Dems to buy more votes. So of course Tim and others like him don’t bat an eye at a vote being bought for a $10 Food City gift card.

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