Jan. 15 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. foreclosure filings jumped 81 percent last year as falling house prices, tighter mortgage lending and the longest recession in a quarter century battered property owners, RealtyTrac Inc. said.
More than 2.3 million properties got a default or auction notice, or were seized by lenders, the Irvine, California-based seller of default data said today. That’s the most RealtyTrac has documented in four years of recordkeeping. Filings rose 41 percent in December from a year earlier to 303,410.
The nation lost more than 2.6 million jobs last year, the most since 1945, and U.S. stocks had their worst performance since the Great Depression. President-elect Barack Obama has said the country needs to prevent foreclosures to revive the housing market and economy.
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