The D.C. Examiner provides what will probably be seen as good news to homeowners throughout the Washington, D.C. area:
WASHINGTON (Map, News) - Though tough economic data seems to have been piling up lately, Thursday brought a hint of good news as home foreclosures dropped in the majority of the metro area and across the country, from January to February.
The one-month decrease comes at the start of the spring season, when real estate activity tends to pick up.
“We’ve got the best three months ahead of us,” said Donna Evers, a real estate broker and owner or Washington-based Evers and Co., referring to the mid-March to mid-June period.
The number of properties with foreclosure filings fell 32.5 percent in the District of Columbia in February, with 340 foreclosure filings on properties, down from 504 the month before, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac, a Web-based foreclosure listing company, which releases monthly foreclosure data.
In Northern Virginia, filings slid 18.7 percent, with only one county, Loudoun, seeing a slight increase of 1.3 percent, from 388 properties with foreclosure filings to 393 properties. Prince William County, which has been hit hard by the mortgage crisis, saw a decrease in filings of 23.7 percent, from 1,504 properties to 1,147 properties.
Fairfax County’s number of foreclosures dipped 19.2 percent, from 1,330 properties to 1,074 properties, and Arlington County dropped 12.8 percent from 94 properties with foreclosure filings to 82 properties.
Overall, in the state of Virginia, foreclosures dropped 18.7 percent over the past month as well, from 5,152 properties with filings to 4,187 properties.
This is, of course, only one months worth of data and we’ll need to see how things go through the Spring before celebrating, but it’s a welcome sign in what has otherwise been a dreary market.
