Actually, the headline above is fiction. The surprising truth is that foreclosures in Las Vegas and the rest of Nevada have been plunging, in spite of the state’s 13 percent unemployment rate:
Foreclosures filings plummeted in November in Las Vegas and the rest of Nevada, but analysts are unsure if this marks a trend.
California-based RealtyTrac reported that foreclosure filings in Nevada dropped by double digits for the second consecutive month. The 9,295 filings in November were 33 percent fewer than October, in which filings were 26 percent below September.
November’s filings were also 33 percent below November 2008.
“It has been pretty amazing what we have been seeing in Nevada and Las Vegas in terms of the last two months,” said RealtyTrac spokesman Daren Bloomquist. “It was surprising to us. We didn’t expect to see this trend to continue because so many forces are driving foreclosures. It is still up in the air if this is a temporary reprieve or if it has truly turned. We are going to be watching it closely in the next two months.”
By the way, it’s not just Nevada. Nationally, “[f]oreclosure filings fell by 8% in November, making it the fourth consecutive month of improvement in the housing market. There were 306,627 filings last month, according to RealtyTrac, an online marketer of foreclosed properties. That decline follows a 3% drop in October, 4% in September and 1% in August.”
So, housing bears, how’s that “shadow inventory” thesis working out?
Dr. Duru