Texas Foreclosure Rate Down Even With Skyrocketing U.S. Trend

January 30, 2008

IRVINE, Calif. – Jan. 29, 2008 – RealtyTrac® (realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released year-end data from its 2007 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows a total of 2,203,295 foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 1,285,873 properties nationwide during the year, up 75 percent from 2006. The report also shows that more than 1 percent of all U.S. households were in some stage of foreclosure during the year, up from 0.58 percent in 2006.

A total of 215,749 foreclosure filings were reported in December, up 97 percent from December 2006 and bringing the fourth-quarter total to 642,150 filings on 527,740 properties — up 1 percent from the previous quarter and up 86 percent from the fourth quarter of 2006.

“The year ended with a monthly increase of 7 percent in December, making it the fifth straight month with more than 200,000 foreclosure filings reported and giving the fourth quarter the highest quarterly total we’ve seen since we began issuing our report in January 2005,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. “It also pushed the foreclosure filing total for 2007 well over 2 million. And while filings were up 75 percent, the number of properties in some stage of foreclosure was up 79 percent, indicating that some properties may have just entered the initial stage of foreclosure in 2007 and could be going through the rest of the foreclosure process in 2008 — unless lender and government intervention efforts begin to gain more traction.”

Rate Rank	State Name	Total Foreclosure Filings	%Change from 2006	%Change from 2005	Total Properties with Filings	%Households (foreclosure rate)
28	Alaska	1,650	54.64	17.69	1,332	0.486
26	Arkansas	14,310	26.44	23.58	6,406	0.513
5	Colorado	71,149	29.96	140.12	39,403	1.919
38	Delaware	1,430	225.00*	342.72*	999	0.266
2	Florida	279,325	123.96	129.25	165,291	2.002
43	Hawaii	1,270	88.71	-60.39	966	0.197
9	Illinois	90,782	25.29	94.30	64,310	1.250
33	Iowa	7,404	114.92*	251.90*	4,103	0.314
35	Kentucky	8,793	23.45	76.96	5,105	0.274
48	Maine	N/A	N/A	N/A	286	0.042
19	Mass.	41,487	161.14	751.36	17,737	0.660
25	Minnesota	13,615	127.11*	506.73*	11,557	0.513
13	Missouri	32,022	80.93	176.74	23,492	0.906
30	Nebraska	3,971	30.88	91.84	3,636	0.474
40	New Hampshire	N/A	N/A	N/A	1,238	0.212
32	New Mexico	3,893	-26.04	-46.55	2,994	0.357
18	North Carolina	37,426	66.52	135.07	29,101	0.739
6	Ohio	153,196	87.93	207.35	89,979	1.797
22	Oregon	10,746	12.25	56.76	8,461	0.543
31	Rhode Island	3,241	153.80*	7804.88*	1,838	0.410
50	South Dakota	N/A	N/A	N/A	24	0.007
12	Texas	149,703	-4.57	9.22	84,469	0.936
49	Vermont	61	35.56	1.67	29	0.009
21	Washington	23,705	27.95	59.47	15,184	0.573
29	Wisconsin	17,503	131.15*	241.79*	12,133	0.486