Worcester foreclosure starts down 25%

Courtesy Photo Timothy Warren, CEO of The Warren Group, said the foreclosures are finally moving through the system in Massachusetts.

Write a Comment

By Sam Bonacci

Worcester County’s foreclosure starts fell by 24.7 percent in September, beating the state-wide decline of 18.7 percent in starts, while finalized foreclosures continued to rise in Worcester and statewide, according to data from The Warren Group.

Lenders in Worcester filed 168 petitions to foreclose in September, the first step in a foreclosure, down from 223 petitions last September. The number of completed foreclosures, however, were up by 61.4 percent to 134 in September.

The local numbers follow the statewide trend with an 18.7-percent decline in petitions to 958 in September, compared with 1,179 filed in September of last year, according to Boston real estate information firm The Warren Group. There were 602 foreclosure deeds filed statewide in September, a 67.2 percent increase from the 360 deeds filed at the same time last year.

“Foreclosure starts are beginning to ease,” Timothy Warren., CEO of The Warren Group, said in a statement. “The backlog of delinquent mortgages being fed into the foreclosure pipeline may be on the wane after two-and-a-half years of heavy processing work. The real estate market in Massachusetts is too strong to have foreclosure starts increase at the recent pace.”