New figures compiled by RealtyTrac show more than 74,000 homes were foreclosed last month and nearly 291,000 homeowners received at least one foreclosure-related notice. The number of threatened homes is up 30 percent from a year ago.
The Obama administration's plan for reversing the crisis is only just getting under way, but a number of banks and state governments had moved to temporarily halt foreclosures even before the latest rise in foreclosures.
Adding to the ugliness, RealtyTrac estimates there are about 700,000 foreclosed properties that banks have held back from listing for sale. That makes up a so-called ``shadow inventory'' of unsold homes that the foreclosure tracking company says could drag out the housing crisis even longer.
GEORGIA, GAINESVILLE AREA
More than 10,000 new foreclosure filings were recorded in Georgia last month, 1,754 of them in a ten-county area around Gainesville. RealtyTrac says the highest ratio of filings was in Barrow County... one for every 154 homes.
As you might expect, Gwinnett County led the way in raw numbers with 1,072 new filings. In Hall County, 201 were added.
The ten counties and the number of new filings in February are:
Banks 4
Barrow 154
Jackson 76
Habersham 36
White 18
Lumpkin 18
Dawson 31
Forsyth 144
Gwinnett 1,072
Hall 201
(AccessNorthGa.com's Ken Stanford contributed to this report.(
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On the Net: RealtyTrac. http://www.realtytrac.com/MapSearch/Georgia.html
