There’s good and bad news on the mortgage foreclosure front.  Nationally, foreclosures dropped three percent in July, but they jumped way up in New Jersey compared to a year ago.

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A big part of the big increase in Jersey foreclosures had to do with the court backlog finally starting to reduce. Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia posted annual decreases in REO, or bank repossession activity, but there were some notable exceptions where REO activity increased annually, including Florida (38 percent), Ohio (25 percent), Illinois (22 percent), and New Jersey (21 percent) – all judicial foreclosure states where foreclosures are processed through the court system.

Foreclosure starts increased on a year-over-year basis in 27 states, led by Connecticut (201 percent), New Jersey (164 percent), Pennsylvania (139 percent), Indiana (83 percent), and Massachusetts (65 percent) – all judicial foreclosure states.

RealtyTrac number cruncher Darren Blomquist says even with foreclosures rising in the state, we are still doing better than, say California or Florida. He says we are seeing during the month of July that the foreclosure rate was one in every 1566 housing units. Blomquist says that is actually less than half of the National average.

New Jersey is one of a handful of states where all foreclosures must travel through the court system.

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