As an agent that specializes in foreclosures and short sales, I’ve noticed less Default/Breach and Election to Sell’s being(BETS/DETS) filed in Clark county than in the years before. I decided to look at some statistics and give my opinion on what’s going on with the foreclosure market.
In 2019 there were 2,865 BETS/DETS filed in Clark County and 2,773 Notice of Trustee Sales(NOTS) filed. That’s about what we’d expect for an average year. Obviously we expected a decline due to regulations imposed by the federal government on foreclosures and the introduction of forbearance programs. In 2020 there were only 1,188 BETS/DETS and 1,035 NOTS which is roughly a 60% decline in foreclosure activity. Of course we all know that people didn’t start magically making more regular payments in the middle of the pandemic. So far for all of 2021 we have 1,003 NOTS homes that were scheduled for auction at some point which actually puts us on pace to have more than we did in 2020. Surprisingly, we only have 607 BETS/DETS that have been filed in 2021 which is roughly half of the 2020 numbers despite us being 3/4 of the way through the year.
The auction is the very last step in the foreclosure process so the chances of these homeowners resolving the issue without selling the house themselves is much lower than homeowners. A Breach/Default and Election to Sell must still be served to a homeowner BEFORE they can legally file the Notice Of Trustee Sale. What these numbers tell me is that the banks are pursuing people that were in default BEFORE the pandemic at a higher rate than people that started defaulting during the pandemic. This leads me to believe that they are clearing a backlog of people that had been previously served the BETS notice pre pandemic. Once the foreclosure moratorium is up, I would expect to see anyone that had been served the BETS notice previously during the pandemic that hasn’t yet received their NOTS to be next in line. It’s just my opinion, but I foresee it happening quicker than expected. If you’re part of the forbearance program that was offered, it will not necessarily stop the foreclosure process if you were behind on payments before the pandemic started 3/15/2019.
