Nine hundred seventy-three notifications of sale of deeds of trust, which is the last portion of the foreclosure procedure, which was lower than in January at nine hundred eighty-six and lower still than the preceding December, when there were over fifteen hundred notifications issued. The figure for February 2010 shows a decrease of just over twenty percent from the same months' figures in 2009, as lenders began to provide borrowers with loan modifications for the mortgages that they could no longer afford to pay or to accept short sales at less than the remaining mortgage amount.
However, the increase in notices of default to over two thousand one-hundred during February, which was the largest number since Fall of 2009, to just above seventeen hundred in the preceding month reveals that quite a number of home owners still have difficulty in paying their mortgages due to personal financial difficulties or they have discontinued making their mortgage payments due to the fact that the value of their homes is considerably lower than the outstanding balance.
The defaults were just over thirty-seven percent below last years' numbers, mainly due to steps taken during 2008 to slow the progression of default to foreclosure. Then, during the first part of 2009, the lenders took care of their existing numbers of those who were late in making mortgage payments by two or more months by filing a great number of default notices seemingly all at once.
While San Ysidro showed the highest foreclosure rate at five per one thousand homes, Pt. Loma and Coronado, with only a single foreclosure each, had the lowest rate at one per five thousand homes.
