Garden State facing withering backlog of foreclosures

New Jersey must work through a backlog of 50,000 to 100,000 unprocessed foreclosures because of delays caused by an investigation into how lenders handled the filings, said Richard Constable, acting commissioner of the state Community Affairs Department. Foreclosures slowed to about 10,000 last year from 50,000 in 2010 and 150,000 two years ago after claims of “robo- signing” -- unverified documents sped through the system -- spurred an investigation by state attorneys general at the end of 2010, Constable said today at a meeting of mayors in the Statehouse in Trenton. As many as 100,000 properties will soon come to market in New Jersey as banks resume processing foreclosure sales, Constable said. The state will work with towns to make sure that the foreclosures don't blight neighborhoods, he said. New Jersey has the second-highest inventory of homes in foreclosure after Florida, with 6.4 percent of all dwellings with a mortgage in the process, according to data released today by CoreLogic Inc., a Santa Ana, California-based data real estate information company. Nationally, 1.4 million homes, or 3.4 percent of those with a mortgage, were in foreclosure as of December. New Jersey also had the second-longest average foreclosure process, at 964 days in the fourth quarter, after New York, where properties took an average of 1,019 days to complete the process, RealtyTrac said in a report last month. Nationwide, the average was 348 days, according to the Irvine, California-based property-data company. --Bloomberg News--