Local foreclosure rate not spiking with country

By Jennifer Edwards (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Sunday, August 30, 2009

NATCHEZ — While many families across the nation struggle to hold on to their houses, Adams County has been relatively unaffected by the national rise in home foreclosures, local industry experts said.

Subprime lending — home loans issued to consumers with less than stellar credit — and rapid growth in home sells are two of the most noted causes for spikes in foreclosure rates. And neither of those happened in Adams County, said Frances Cothren, senior vice president and mortgage loan originator at Britton & Koontz Bank in Natchez.

“Since our economy is fairly stable here, we don’t have the really high highs, but we also don’t have the really low lows,” Cothren said. “We are insulated somewhat from what goes on elsewhere because we don’t have a large number of people moving out or in. That can be a good thing in an economy like this one.”

Locally, from August 2007 to July 2008, the Adams County Chancery Clerk’s office recorded 30 trustee deeds and substitute trustee deeds indicating finalized foreclosures in the county.

The number of notices of pending foreclosures published in the newspaper is higher, but at times, homeowners are able to secure funding to rectify the mortgage before the property is foreclosed on.

For the same time period the next year, August 2008 to July 2009, the office recorded 31 trustee deeds and substitute trustee deeds for the county.

Local banking officials credit a different lending mind set to keeping their loans safe. Jeanine Herrington, executive vice president at Delta Bank, said community banks are more conservative in their lending practices than larger national mortgage companies.

“We underwrite our loans differently from the larger mortgage companies,” she said. “If they don’t have the cash flow to sustain the loan, then we can’t make it.

“If they don’t meet the criteria or we don’t feel they have the ability to pay back the mortgage, we don’t make the loan. That is not the way community banks do business.”

And she said that method of banking is paying off, because Delta Bank, she said has a foreclosure rate of practically zero.

“We just haven’t seen an increase at all,” she said.

Cothren said the same is true at Britton & Koontz.

“Our experience at B&K is that we are well below the national average,” she said.

And what is working in the Miss-Lou to keep foreclosure rates steady and low, is also working on a state level according to Mac Deaver, president of the Mississippi Bankers Association.

“We’ve been steady as she goes and have not had the real problem relative to the rest of the country in terms of foreclosures,” Deaver said. “Our foreclosure rate is miniscule compared to the rate in the nation.”

According to statistics released in July by Realtytrac, a California based company that tracks real estate statistics nationally, Mississippi ranks 43rd in foreclosure rates for the first two quarters of 2009. Realtytrac reported 2,175 foreclosure fillings in Mississippi, a number that is equal to .17 percent of all housing units in the state being lost to foreclosure.

Deaver cited Mississippi’s stable housing market as one factor that is keeping foreclosure rates from spiking like they have in other states.

Nevada, Arizona and Florida ranked first, second and third respectively in terms of foreclosure fillings in the July Realtytrac report.

Nevada’s foreclosure rate was 6.23 percent, while Arizona and Florida had rates of 3.37 percent and 3.08 percent respectively.

“Mississippi never had the real boom that other areas of the country had in terms of housing,” Deaver said. “Now, those are the areas that are having the huge foreclosure rates.”

Deaver said a large portion of the foreclosures in Mississippi originated through non-bank entities that utilized risky lending practices.

“Commercial banks in Mississippi did virtually none of that,” he said.

Natchez attorney Robert Punches said the foreclosure filings he has seen in Adams County have mostly been filed by national companies and not local banks.

“Mostly what I’m seeing are not local banks having problems, but big money trees and national companies that are getting foreclosed on,” Punches said. “They are the ones that did the subprime deals.

Local Realtor Glenn Green said he too hasn’t seen a significant increase in the number of foreclosed houses listed for sale in Natchez.

Green said neither local banks nor national mortgage companies are required to list their foreclosed properties with a Realtor, but companies do make property listings known to realty companies so potential buyers can view them.

“There may be a couple more than average, but I haven’t seen an inordinate increase (in foreclosed properties),” Green said.