Eight percent of the residential mortgages in Ulster County have received 90-day pre-foreclosure notices, ranking it first in the state in percentage of mortgages officially in trouble.
In fact, according to an Oct. 7 report by the state Banking Department, the Hudson Valley is being surprisingly hard hit by the ongoing mortgage mess, with Orange and Sullivan tied for third statewide, each having 7.5 percent of their residential mortgages receiving ninety day pre-foreclosure notices.
And in a different ranking of the same problem, Westchester County is ranked fifth among 62 counties statewide, with 6,309 total mortgages having received 90-day notices. That is 4.7 percent of the 134,000 such notices filed statewide, according to the report.
The top five in order are Suffolk, at 14.8 percent, with 19,880 troubled mortgages, then Queens, Nassau, Brooklyn and Westchester. Orange County is listed eighth, with 4,641 troubled mortgages, which is 3.5 percent of the statewide total.
Dutchess, Rockland and Ulster are ranked 13th through 15th statewide, with Dutchess having 2,821, or 2.1 percent of the statewide total, Rockland having 2,792, also 2.1 percent and Ulster having 2,490 troubled mortgages, or 1.9 percent of the state total.
A 90-day foreclosure notice does not mean a foreclosure action is inevitable or even imminent, said Sal Prividera Jr., communications director for the New York State Association of Realtors.
“The figures certainly relate to the economy, the times we are all experiencing,” he said. “But what we are seeing is the number of foreclosures in New York is relatively small compared to the problem in foreclosures elsewhere in the country.”
He lauded the goal of the Banking Department”™s program compiling date on troubled mortgages, saying it allows for early intervention that could help keep a house and owner together.
The data is being collected in accordance with a December 2009 state Mortgage Foreclosure Law, and the information was greatly enhanced Aug. 6 when the Banking Department started an online system to make it easier for lenders, assignees and mortgage servicers to file information pertaining to pre-foreclosure notices with the department. That allowed the department to collate more data under and update a report from June. The next update will be released in January of 2011.
The 90-day pre-foreclosure notice means that the borrower has 90 days to get the mortgage current before the loaning entity can initiate foreclosure proceedings. That next step is called a lis pendens and the next report by the banking department will include data on how many mortgages have reached that phase.
The bad news caught Ulster Realtors by surprise. “I had not heard that,” said Dorothy Pismopulos, CEO of the county board of Realtors, when asked about the matter by a reporter.
“I don”™t see any really happy looks on these faces here,” she said, having relayed the data to Realtors at hand in her office. She said that even anecdotally, nothing had suggested Ulster”™s prime place on an unpopular list.
“I”™m actually pretty surprised,” said Andi Turco-Levin, president of the board of Realtors. She said the report, which numerically shows that 2,490 of the county”™s 30,623 mortgages have received notice. She said the report did not contain enough data to reveal whether the problem is localized to economically harder hit areas and cities like Kingston, or arises from problems paying for second homes. She speculated it”™s related to job losses and the growing property tax burden.
“We have problems with people keeping jobs and problems with extremely high taxes,” said Turco-Levin. “So it might not be a matter of them not being able to afford their mortgage, but when you see the property tax within that mortgage double in just a few years, that can drive a person into trouble making payments.”
According to the Oct. 7 report, 5.2 percent of all mortgages statewide have received the 90-day foreclosure notices. After Ulster at 8.1 percent, the Bronx is second with 4,639 households or 7.5 percent of the 62,000 mortgages in the county receiving notice. Sullivan listed third, with 872 of its 12,200 mortgages and Orange fourth with 4,641 of its 65,000 mortgage receiving notice, in each county that amounts to 7.5 percent of their total mortgages.
Rockland at 5.6 percent of its 50,200 mortgages and Dutchess at 5.5 percent of its 51,300 mortgages are above the state average. Putnam, listed 18th in the state at 5 percent of its 22,000 mortgages, is right on the average. By this measure Westchester fares relatively well, ranked 30th among the 62 counties with 4.3 percent of its 146,400 mortgages receiving notice.
That data also contains new insight into the bursting of the housing bubble and the economic morass that followed. Fifty-two percent of the 90-day pre-foreclosure notices were filed against borrowers where the mortgage originated between 2005 and 2007. About 53 percent of the notices were sent to borrowers less than 60 days delinquent on their loan and 26 percent to borrowers more than 120 days delinquent.
The state breaks the data down into 10 regions and there is a striking geographic tilt south in terms of troubled mortgages. The Hudson Valley has 16 percent of the houses receiving pre-foreclosure notices, New York City received 29 percent, and Long Island 25 percent. The Finger Lakes and Western New York each had 7 percent of the notices and the Capital region 6 percent.
