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N.J. foreclosure filing rate up 115% from last year

New Jersey's foreclosure-filing rate skyrocketed in August, by 115 percent over the same month in 2013, pushing the state into the Top Five, housing-data analytics firm RealtyTrac said Thursday.

New Jersey's foreclosure-filing rate skyrocketed in August, by 115 percent over the same month in 2013, pushing the state into the Top Five, housing-data analytics firm RealtyTrac said Thursday.

The Garden State had the fourth-highest U.S. foreclosure-filing rate, one in every 553 housing units, RealtyTrac reported. By contrast, Pennsylvania saw its filing rate continue to fall, by 12.06 percent year over year.

Among the nation's metropolitan areas, Atlantic City had the second highest foreclosure-filing rate - one in every 292 housing units, or nearly four times the national average. It was the 28th consecutive month that the hard-pressed resort city experienced an increase in foreclosure filings.

Nationwide, August's filing rate - one in every 1,126 housing units - was down 9 percent from the same month a year ago, RealtyTrac said.

For the United States as a whole, "the August foreclosure numbers demonstrate that although the foreclosure crisis is well behind us, the messy business of cleaning up the distress lingering from the housing bust continues in many markets," said Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac.

The number of foreclosure auctions nationally rose 1 percent year over year, the first increase since November 2010, when "the robo-signing controversy rocked the foreclosure industry," Blomquist said.

That indicated "mortgage servicers are finally adjusting to the new paradigms for proper foreclosure that have been implemented in many states, whether by legislation or litigation or both," he said.

New Jersey's foreclosure-auction rate rose 71 percent year over year.

South Jersey agents were not surprised by RealtyTrac's August figures.

Patricia Settar of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services Fox & Roach Realtors in Mullica Hill said she had been seeing more bank-owned (repossessed) homes listed under $200,000 this year, though foreclosure numbers seemed much lower than in the past.

Mike Lentz of Keller Williams Realty in Sewell said data from Trend Multiple Listing Service showed an increase in foreclosure listings but fewer short sales (in which the lender agrees to accept less than is owed on the mortgage) in the last six months.

Since January, 164 bank-owned properties have been listed in Gloucester County, for example, more than double the number in the same period in 2013. Short sales totaled 298 this year compared with 411 in 2013, Lentz said.

In the same period of 2014, non-distressed sales totaled 2,435 in the county, according to Trend.

"With the long processing time to complete a foreclosure in New Jersey, I see this increase in bank-owned properties as a result of issues that were occurring three-plus years ago," Lentz said.

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