Banks Claimed a Record 1M Homes Last Year

Banks repossessed a little more than a million homes last year, a record high, according to the latest report from RealtyTrac—and that’s despite a sharp drop off in the fourth quarter thanks to the robo-signing scandal. Next year will likely be even worse, one RealtyTrac exec tells NPR, forecasting 1.2 million repossessions. What’s worse, banks are repossessing homes faster than they can sell them, building a backlog that won’t clear until around 2013.

In all, 2,871,891 homes were affected by some form of foreclosure filing, and that number “would have easily exceeded 3 million had it not been for the fourth-quarter drop,” RealtyTrac’s CEO said in the official report. “Even so, 2010 foreclosure activity still hit a record high … and many of the foreclosure proceedings that were stopped in late 2010 will likely be re-started" in 2011. (More mortgage robo-signing scandal stories.)