When will the foreclosure crisis end ?

This article was written by Jann Swanson for the The Mortgage News Daily. I can't wait for the day that we are all out of this mess and I hope all who went thru the trauma of losing their homes recover fully emotionally and financially better than ever before.
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The May report shows that 214,927 properties in the U.S. received some type of foreclosure filing last month compared to 219,258 in April which was itself down 9 percent from March. RealtyTrac, an Irvine California firm tracks foreclosure filings in three categories:

1. Notice of Default (NOD) and Lis Pendens (LIS). This is the first legal notification from a lender that the borrower on a mortgage loan has defaulted under the terms of their mortgage and the lender intends to foreclose unless the loan is brought current.
2. Auction - Notice of Trustee Sale and Notice of Foreclosure Sale (NTS and NFS): if the borrower does not catch up on their payments the lender will file a notice of sale (the lender intends to sell the property). This notice is published in local paper and contains information pertaining to the date, time and subject property address.
3. Real Estate Owned or REO properties : "REO" stands for "real estate owned" and typically refers to the inventory of real estate that banks and mortgage companies have foreclosed on and subsequently purchased through the foreclosure auction if there was no offer higher than the minimum bid.

Notice of Default filings (NOD, LIS) totaled 58,797 in May, a seven percent decrease from April and down 39 percent from a year earlier.  This was the lowest number of default notices recorded in a single month since December 2006.

Foreclosures were scheduled (NTS, NFS) for the first time on 89,251 housing units.  This was an increase of 3 percent over April figures following eight straight months of decreases.  The May 2011 figure was 33 percent lower than the number of foreclosures scheduled a year earlier.

Lenders repossessed 66,879 properties during the month, a 4 percent decrease from April and the second straight month the number was down.  Repossessions (REO) were 29 percent lower than one year earlier.  RealtyTrac noted that, since the so-called robo-signing controversy erupted last fall, REO activity has exhibited a rollercoaster pattern with five monthly decreases and three increases.

"Foreclosure processing delays continue to mask the true face of the foreclosure situation, although there were some clues in the May numbers of what lies behind that mask," said James J. Saccacio, chief executive officer of RealtyTrac. "First, activity spiked in May for various stages of the foreclosure process in some states, a pattern that has occurred in several states over the past few months. This pattern provides evidence that lenders are somewhat unevenly pushing batches of bad loans through foreclosure as they overhaul their paperwork and documentation procedures and as they determine that some local markets are able to absorb more foreclosure inventory.