Banks Take Back More Homes In October

Lenders repossessed more Sacramento area homes in October.

Bank repos were up 12 percent month-over-month and seven percent year-over-year. The numbers come from Attom Data Solutions. Daren Blomquist is with the research firm.

"Still the majority of loans that are in foreclosure in Sacramento, the metro area, are tied to loans originated between 2004 and 2008," says Blomquist.

In fact, nearly 60 percent of all loans fit into that time frame that preceded the housing mortgage crisis.

"That just points to this so-called shadow inventory of backlog that's just taking a while to work through," says Blomquist. "Even though definitely we're past the crisis level we're still seeing some of that come through in markets like Sacramento."

Meanwhile overall foreclosure activity in Sacramento County, driven by foreclosure starts, is down 26 percent from a year ago. Blomquist says Sacramento will continue to be a tough market for buyers because of a low inventory of available homes.

Overall U.S. home foreclosure activity in October posted the biggest month-over-month increase since August 2007.

Blomquist calls it an "October surprise." California and Sacramento bucked the trend...but not Reno.

"In Reno we did see a big jump...we did see this October surprise show up with a 68 percent month-over-month increase in foreclosure activity," says Blomquist. "And most of that was in foreclosure starts. There was a 162 percent increase month-over-month in foreclosure starts in Reno."

Blomquist says more than half of the home loans that are in foreclosure in Reno are tied to loans originated between 2004 and 2008...right before the mortgage crisis.