Lowell Deeds

Today’s Globe contains a story about a growing backlog of “foreclosure filings” at the Massachusetts Land Court. The court attributes the delay to several factors including a rise in overall foreclosures, a temporary shortage of employees at the court and a clunky computer system. I can’t address the second and third factors, but based on statistics at this registry, I can confirm that the incidence of foreclosures continues to rise. Comparing the number of foreclosure deeds filed here makes this quite clear. In all of November 2005, only one foreclosure deed was filed; in November 2004 there were 2; in November 2003 there were 3. So far for this November, there have been 22 foreclosure deeds filed. In fact, the total number of foreclosure deeds filed thus far in 2006 – 153 of them – is more than three times as many as were filed in all of 2005 (47). So there’s still no sign of an easing of the housing market’s slide. At the end of next week, we’ll post the official figures for the entire month of November.