Nevada and Las Vegas maintained their No. 1 and No. 5 rankings, respectively, on the national foreclosure activity lists in January.
That’s according to data provider RealtyTrac of Irvine, Calif., which on Wednesday issued its latest statistics on bank seizures of homes.
RealtyTrac said that in January, one in every 624 housing units nationwide received a foreclosure filing.
That means foreclosure filings — default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions — were reported on 210,941 U.S. properties in January.
Foreclosure activity nationwide was down 19 percent from January 2011, as banks slowed takeovers of homes with defaulted mortgages while settling a national robosigning probe.
But RealtyTrac said foreclosures were expected to pick up now that the deal over robosigning and other mortgage servicing problems had been finalized.
''The settlement sets forth clear guidelines for lenders and servicers to follow when foreclosing, which should allow them to push through some of the delayed foreclosures from last year,'' RealtyTrac CEO Brandon Moore said in a statement.
The foreclosure numbers for Nevada and the Las Vegas metro area in January were much higher than the national average.
Nevada continued to lead the nation, with one in every 198 housing units receiving a filing, while Las Vegas maintained its No. 5 position among metro areas, with one in every 172 units subjected to a filing.
While the year-over-year national foreclosure numbers were down 19.28 percent, the number of Nevada and Las Vegas filings were each down even more substantially: 51 percent.
Neighboring California, also hard-hit by foreclosures, accounted for nine of the nation’s top 10 metro foreclosure rates. Stockton led the nation with one in 140 housing units receiving a filing, RealtyTrac said.
Wednesday’s numbers for Nevada and Las Vegas were not a surprise, as unemployment locally remains high at 12.7 percent and the Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors has reported home prices continued to fall in the Las Vegas area in January.
The GLVAR reported the median price of single-family homes sold locally in January was $118,000, down 1.7 percent from $120,000 in December and down 5.6 percent from $125,000 one year ago.