Tom Ruff, The Information Market, sent out his October report for Maricopa County yesterday.  As always, it’s well worth the read.

Subject: October Foreclosure Numbers

I went to Halloween party Friday night as Tom the housing analyst, I was asked by the host to leave, said I was scaring the guests.

OCTOBER NUMBERS: October’s foreclosure numbers are in and they’re full of lies, so many in fact that you would think they were running for public office. If you’re following foreclosure numbers closely, please keep this in mind as you read different reporting services.  October notices hit their all time high with 8,503; 1,056 more than September. The lie, 874 of these recordings were new recordings on previously recorded notices.  This is the first month we’ve seen a reportable number of duplicate filings. October numbers should have been closer to the “attempt to plateau” number we’ve described in past mailings, somewhere around 7500. Unique notices in October totaled  7638. Monthly cancellations jumped to 3516 nearly doubling September numbers, the reason, intervention. Think of this month’s cancellation notices as a child behaving badly and a parent yelling “timeout”.