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64 the previous quarter in 72 of the 158 metro areas (46%), including New York, Los Angeles, Houston, San Francisco, and Phoenix. Additionally, seriously delinquent loans secured by vacant properties could represent a more significant rise in zombie foreclosures soon. Although there is no definitive data on vacant properties with mortgages that are at least 90 days late, applying the same 3% "zombie" foreclosure rate to the 1.8 million mortgages that were seriously delinquent in June—that according to Black Knight—would translate into an additional 56,000 zombie foreclosures waiting in the wings. Given the recent sharp rise in seriously delinquent loans, that 56,000 would represent a 197% increase from the previous month and a 312% increase from a year ago. GREAT RECESSION ZOMBIE FORECLOSURE INVASION Local markets and neighborhoods with high zombie foreclosure numbers back at the peak in Q1 2014—still in the midst of the cleanup from the housing carnage left over from the Great Recession—struggled to deal with the flood of abandoned foreclosures. "Many homes did not make it through foreclosure because servicers did not move quickly enough, either due to capacity issues or due to the decline in home prices reducing their incentive to foreclose," said Julia Gordon, President of the National Community Stabilization Trust (NCST), a nonprofit organization focused on promoting homeownership in distressed neighborhoods. "In other cases, the 'robosigning' scandal— in which the foreclosing parties could not demonstrate their ownership of the loan— caused judges to stop foreclosures across the board, for both occupied and vacant properties. at ultimately had unintended negative consequences for neighborhood stabilization." Gordon noted that more refined foreclosure prevention and loss mitigation tools are now available and familiar to local government agencies and mortgage servicers, and at least so far, housing prices have not collapsed, making an extended delay in the foreclosure process unnecessary and unproductive. "You want the right tool for the job, and stopping the foreclosure process as a whole "You want the right tool for the job, and stopping the foreclosure process as a whole for every property— especially for vacant properties— is not the right tool." —Julia Gordon, President of the National Community Stabilization Trust Feature By: Daren Blomquist