Year-over-year foreclosure activity – default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions – continued to decline in California in March, according the latest RealtyTrac report. However, notices of default – the first stage of the foreclosure process – rose 10 percent in the first quarter from the same period in 2013.
 
There are a couple of reasons for the uptick in new foreclosure activity, reports the Riverside County-based Press-Enterprise. Banks have adjusted to the 2013 California Homeowner’s Bill of Rights and begun to push through foreclosures that may have been delayed, says Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac.
 
Still, California is in better shape than it was a few years ago, reports Capitol Public Radio. While the number of properties starting the foreclosure process in January was 6,900, at the height of the crisis in 2009 and 2010, that number was closer to 50,000. By 2012, notices of default averaged 17,000 a month, and in 2013, that number fell to about 6,800 a month.
 
RealtyTrac’s Blomquist cautions that the numbers for 2013 were artificially low because of the hiatus by lenders on foreclosure actions. “We saw a year of the numbers going down, and [in 2014] we will see another year of the numbers bouncing up to catch up the deficit,’’ he said.