The following article from Realty Trac states that number of foreclosures is down in Georgia, for the first half of 2011. The same is true for Chatham County. One  reason in addition to the information provided by Realty Trac is the banks are working with real estate agents who bring short sale opportunities to the banks. The banks prefer a short sale to a foreclosure and or an REO.

Foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 60,870 Georgia properties during the first six months of 2011, an 18 percent drop from the second half of 2010 and 15 percent below the level reported for the first half
of last year, according to the Midyear 2011 Foreclosure Market Report just released by RealtyTrac^®. The state remained fifth highest in foreclosure rate nationally, reporting 1.50 percent of its housing units received a foreclosure filing during the six-month period.

Foreclosure filings were reported on 9,715 Georgia properties in June, down 8 percent from May and down 20 percent from June 2010. One in every 418 Georgia housing units received a foreclosure filing in June, the eighth highest state foreclosure rate in the nation.

Newton and Walton counties posts top foreclosure rate at midyear

Newton and Walton counties posted the state’s top county foreclosure rate for the first half of 2011 each with one in every 32 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing — 3.5 times the national average and 2.1 times the state average. Henry and Barrow counties came in
second highest for the six-month period, with one in every 34 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing — 3.3 times the national average and twice the state average.

Fulton County has state’s highest foreclosure total

Fulton County had the highest level of foreclosure activity in the state, reporting 7,762 properties with foreclosure filings for the period. Gwinnett County was second highest, reporting 6,947 properties with foreclosure filings. Dekalb County came in third, tallying
5,953 properties with foreclosure filings. Fourth highest was Cobb County, where 4,638 properties with foreclosure filings were reported. Clayton County was fifth, reporting 2,719 properties with foreclosure filings for the first half of the year.

State a top contributor to nation’s foreclosure total in first half of 2011

Georgia accounted for 5 percent of the 1,170,402 properties with foreclosure filings reported nationwide for the first half of 2011. Total U.S. activity decreased 25 percent from the second half of 2010, and was down 29 percent from the level reported for the first half of 2010. One in every 111 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing during
the first six months of the year.

“It would be nice to report that foreclosure activity is dropping as a result of improvements in the economy or the housing market,” said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of
RealtyTrac. “Unfortunately, with unemployment rates inching back up, consumer
confidence weak and home sales and prices continuing to languish, this doesn’t
appear to be the case.

“Processing and procedural delays are pushing foreclosures further and
further out – we estimate that as many as 1 million foreclosure actions that
should have taken place in 2011 will now happen in 2012, or perhaps even later.
This casts an ominous shadow over the housing market, where recovery is
unlikely to happen until the current and forthcoming inventory of distressed
properties can be whittled down to a manageable number.”