Fewer isle foreclosure lawsuits filed during 2015’s start

Fewer lawsuits seeking to foreclose on Hawaii property owners were filed in state court in January and February, extending a trend that started 16 months ago.

The latest data from the state Judiciary show that the number of new foreclosure cases statewide fell more than 40 percent in the first two months of this year compared with the same months last year.

Volume fell by 49 percent in January to 116 new cases from 228 a year ago, and by 41 percent in February to 147 cases from 250 a year earlier.

Last year was the first year with fewer cases year-over-year since 2011, which is when the mortgage industry began conducting all Hawaii foreclosure actions in state court in response to a state law enacted that year to help protect consumers from foreclosure abuses.

The average number of new foreclosure lawsuits per month last year was 174. The average in the first two months of this year was 132. From 2011 to 2013 the average ranged from 230 to 286.

Despite the reduction of new cases, Hawaii by one measure still has a lot of foreclosure cases.

Property information firm Core­Logic reported data Monday that showed Hawaii had the fourth-highest rate of homes in some stage of foreclosure as of February. The company said 2.8 percent of all Hawaii homes with mortgages were in foreclosure. That was twice the national average of 1.4 percent.

The only states with higher figures were New Jersey at 5.3 percent, New York at 4 percent and Florida at 3.4 percent.

Some observers of the local real estate industry believe that a dramatic overhaul of state foreclosure law made in 2011 and tweaked in more recent years produced a backlog of unresolved bad loans that have languished in court.

Proponents of the overhaul said the changes were needed to protect consumers from lenders that were abusing a long-established proc­ess in Hawaii that allowed foreclosures to be done out of court quickly and without oversight.

The CoreLogic report said 775 foreclosure cases in Hawaii were completed in the 12-month period through February. That compared with 810 foreclosure case completions in the year-earlier period.

CoreLogic in a separate report released in March counted Hawaii’s share of mortgages in January that were delinquent more than 90 days, which includes both homes in and not in foreclosure. The report said 4.4 percent of home loans statewide were overdue at least 90 days, which was an improvement from 5.2 percent in the same month last year.