Counties See Rise in New Hampshire Mortgage Foreclosures

Foreclosures in Rockingham County have more than doubled in the first half of this year, as officials cite predatory mortgage lending and a slower New Hampshire housing market as the cause.

Register of Deeds Cathy Stacey said through the end of May, the county has seen 163 foreclosures compared to 74 during the same period last year.

In Strafford County from January to June, there were 85 New Hampshire mortgage defaults compared with 49 last year, according to Registrar of Deeds Leo Lessard.

“You have some shady practices happening, where you’re lending money to borrowers who from the get-go couldn’t afford what they were getting into,” Stacey said.

Stacey said more people cannot afford to make home loan payments, especially if someone in the family falls ill or they lose a job and no longer have two incomes.

“We haven’t seen this type of activity since the ’80s,” she said, referring to the savings and loan crisis.

Also, there have been more liens filed on properties in Rockingham County: 711 through May of this year compared with 450 during a similar time period last year.

“You have the whole issue with the real estate market not moving and the subprime lending. On top of that, you have the emergency of people who are overextending themselves via credit cards and those companies are coming in and attaching properties. It’s kind of a double whammy,” she said.

The recording of new mortgages also has slowed:9,327 through May 31 compared with 10,493 in a similar period last year. Most of the activity is in the Derry, Londonderry and Salem areas, Stacey said.

She added that her office is seeing new plans for subdivisions so there is some activity, but the overall amount of documents filed is down 7 percent from last year and the number of transfers of property is down 16 percent.

The slowdown should not have an effect on the county budget, Stacey said, because she planned for it. She budgeted about $3.6 million revenue for the year, and has collected 59 percent of that by the end of June.

In Strafford County, Rochester has had 36 foreclosures so far this year, compared to 19 last year at this time. Strafford County saw recorded New Hampshire mortgages going down from 4,876 in the first six months of last year to 3,882 this year. Rochester again took the biggest hit — dropping 30 percent from 1,274 to 901.

The number of recorded deeds dropped from 2,393 in the first half of 2006 to 1,975 in 2007.

Revenue from property transfers has declined, with $674,986 coming in compared to $738,232 in the first six months of 2006, according to Lessard.

Lessard said he concluded that the property market had bottomed out after seeing encouraging figures for January and February. However, March, April and June activity has been well below last year’s levels with only the sale of the $35.7 million Flatley property next to the Spaulding Turnpike in Rochester boosting the May numbers to slightly above last year’s levels.

In the York County, Maine housing market there has also been a similar decline.

Deputy Register Claude Dube said the number of recorded mortgages has decreased to 7,027 this year as of July 10 from 10,481 during a similar period in 2006.

“That doesn’t surprise me because last year they were still doing a lot of refinancing for home equity loans. You don’t see that this year because the interest rate has gone up,” he said. “I think the market right now is just slower.”

The number of property-related documents recorded as of July 10 was 32,882 compared with 36,578 last year. He could not provide foreclosure figures because they are not broken out from other court documents.

Dube also said that county officials anticipated receiving less revenue this year. Revenue from property transactions has brought in $1,266,710 so far, compared to $1,359,418 last year.