High Foreclosures Don’t Point to Economic Slowdown, Officials Say
Last year, Putnam County saw 330 foreclosures. The total is likely to approach that number by the end of this month, but Putnam officials don’t necessarily see that as a sign of a dip in the market.
“The state did pass a bunch of regulations a few years back to try to stem the tide and to have some mandatory preliminary conferences to try to get the banks and the homeowners together,” said First Deputy County Clerk Michael Bartolotti. “I think we’re at a point now where all of those safeguards and those additional procedures to try to help out the homeowner, I think they’ve kind of run their course.”
With 289 foreclosures initiated through June, Putnam in on pace to match or exceed the 542 initiated in 2009, its high-water mark since the start of the recession. The economy entered 2009 in a freefall; though it’s now recovering, some of the homeowners who fell into distress in the past few years are just now initiating foreclosure, officials believe.
