By Anita Miller
San Marcos — Two weeks from Tuesday will be more than just Election Day for dozens of Hays County residents. A total of 89 properties slated for foreclosure are scheduled to be auctioned that day on the Courthouse steps.
According to monthly figures from Foreclosure Listing Service, Inc. (FLS), that’s an 11 percent increase from November 2007, when 80 properties were affected.
And the great majority of those properties are someone’s homes.
“Eighty-two percent of the total postings filed for the November auction involved single-family homes or condominiums,” said FLS President George Roddy. “There were 782 postings filed on single-family homes and one on a condominium for the upcoming auction.”
The monthly increase was low compared to Travis County (44 percent); Williamson (37 percent); Comal (23 percent); and Guadalupe (21 percent). Some of the counties tracked by the FLS actually saw declines — Bastrop County was down 22 percent; McClellan by 12 percent and Bexar by two percent.
Hays foreclosure rates for the year so far are also up by 11 percent; with 881 filings so far compared to 794 at this time in 2007. That compares to a 31 percent increase in Travis County; 21 percent in Bexar, 23 percent in Comal and 19 percent in Guadalupe.
“So far this year the highest number of postings filed were 96 in May, and the lowest level was 70 in July,” Roddy said. FLS has been tracking Hays rates since late 2003 and he said the “record high since that time in monthly postings occurred in both July and August of 2004 when 113 postings were filed for each of those foreclosure auctions.”
He said given the pace of the increases, “I expect that 2008’s foreclosure posting activity will reach around 950 notices, which will be the highest annual rate of postings that I have seen since we began tracking this market,” surpassing even the 935 postings in 2004.
From January through November almost 22,500 postings have been filed on the nine Central Texas counties tracked by FLS.
The Nov. 4 auction will be held on the north steps of the Hays County Courthouse.
