The number of foreclosures has steadily been decreasing since the bottom of the local housing crisis at the end of 2011. This week’s graph shows the total number of Trustee Deeds that have been recorded over the last six and a half years on a monthly basis.
Mortgages on properties with 40 acres or less are typically written with a Deed of Trust, which allows the lender to foreclosure over a 120-day period. Mortgages on tracts larger than 40 aces are done with a mortgage documents that can take a year or longer for the foreclosure to occur.
In Flathead County there have only been 80 mortgage foreclosures on 40-plus acre tracts since the beginning of 2010, compared to 1,681 Trustee Deed foreclosures on smaller tracts. The high was in 2011 with 481 Trustee Deed foreclosures plus 11 full mortgage foreclosures.
In the first four months of 2016, there have been 34 Trustee Deed foreclosures, which is down from 38 in the same period last year. There were two larger tract foreclosures in the first four months of 2015 and four in that same period this year.
This graph includes residential, vacant land and commercial real estate. Based on the documents recorded, it is not possible to separate the various types of real estate.
In 1981, Jim started Kelley Appraisal in Kalispell and has since built an extensive database of economic and real estate-related data on northwestern Montana. Over the last several years, he has published annual reports on the Flathead Real Estate Market and been a guest speaker on numerous occasions for various groups in the Flathead.