We guess it’s now absolutely safe to say the housing crisis is officially behind us, based on the latest data showing there was an 82 percent decline in foreclosure filings last month. The Warren Group says it’s the real thing, not some freak statistical anomaly. File under: Wow

The Warren Group reports that both actual foreclosures and foreclosure petitions were down last month in Massachusetts. They’re still relatively high, particularly the number of petitions. But the downward trend is yet another piece of the emerging recovery puzzle. File under: Recovery, Cautious Category I

It sure looks like the foreclosure crisis is ebbing here and elsewhere. The Warren Group reports a big drop in the number of homes that were foreclosed upon in October. The number of actual filings continued to rise, but the Warren Group said the filing increases were artificially low last year due to a deliberate [...]

More evidence of a steadily improving housing market: Foreclosures were down in July in Massachusetts. “It appears there is a downward trend in foreclosure activity,” said the Warren Group chief executive Timothy M. Warren Jr. “A strong economy and recovering housing market is helping lift consumer confidence. This news paired with banks’ return to standard [...]

Foreclosures in Massachusetts rose again in May, this time more than doubling from the same month last year, according to the Warren Group. Normally, we’d be more than a little nervous about this trend. But the banks have recently been freed up to act more aggressively on the foreclosure front — and that’s exactly what [...]

A short while ago, a bunch of states announced, to much fanfare, how they had negotiated a multibillion settlement with all those evil banks accused of screwing up foreclosure cases. The money, the government officials vowed, would go to those harmed by the banking-system process. But guess what? Many of the states took the dough [...]

This is potentially big: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may allow people mortgage forbearances (i.e. skip payments) if they can prove unemployment interfered with their ability to pay their mortgages. This will undoubtedly help people who are jobless and financially struggling. There’s no question about it. But here’s the question: What does it do to [...]

From the Warren Group press release: Foreclosure activity in Massachusetts dropped significantly during the month of March, according to the latest report by The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman. The number of foreclosures initiated by lenders plummeted almost 60 percent from a year earlier. Lenders filed 1,048 petitions to foreclose in March, a [...]

Bloomberg is really on top of things. They have another great, detailed article on yet another “faulty foreclosure” case in Massachusetts. The new case is Belivilacqua v. Rodriguez and deals with the issue of someone who bought a foreclosed property from U.S. Bancorp — only to find title-and-timing problems, similar to the Ibanez case. Here’s the [...]

Boston.com has a good tally of the towns and neighborhoods where foreclosures decreased or increased the most in 2010. The place where foreclosures fell the most, however, isn’t a town, it’s a part of Boston: Roxbury. Foreclosures fell 24.7 percent in 2010 in Roxbury. Other Boston neighborhoods show up on the list for decreases in [...]