Foreclosures up 68 percent, down 10 percent

There are some confusing headlines about foreclosures today. This AP report shows foreclosure filings in the U.S. up 68 percent last month, while BusinessWeek says they're down 10 percent. Rick Sharga of RealityTrac explains that both are correct.

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This is yet another example of how statistics can be deceiving (for another example have a look at this report on new home prices). Anyone considering a home purchase today should understand that the ten percent drop from October to November is much less significant than the 68 percent increase from November 2006 to November of 2007.

Month-to-month data is almost always useless due to its volatility - if you get a few months of consistent data in a row, that might constitute a meaningful trend, but otherwise it is mostly noise.

So, in this case, if your real estate agent calls you and tells you that foreclosures have peaked and that you need to buy now, well, just tell them to "bugger off".

A total of 201,950 foreclosure filings were reported in November as compared to 120,334 a year ago - this trend is not your friend if you are looking for stabilization in the housing market.

Once again, Nevada, Florida and Ohio lead the nation in highest foreclosure filing rates while California claims the highest number of foreclosure filings - the number of foreclosures in the Golden State has more than doubled in the last year to 39,992 last month.