Outpacing a national trend, Sonoma County reported an 87 percent jump in default notices that were sent in August to homeowners who had fallen behind in their mortgage payments.
Lenders sent 432 such notices to county homes last month, according to ForeclosureRadar in Discovery Bay. That was the most notices in more than a year. In July, lenders sent out 231 default notices.
Mendocino County reported 67 default notices, a 56-percent jump over July. Lake County reported 118 default notices, a 24-percent increase.
The number of U.S. homes that received default notices jumped 33 percent in August, RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday.
Sean O’Toole, founder and CEO of ForeclosureRadar, wrote on his blog Thursday that the jump in default notices in several western states “appears to have been primarily driven by Bank of America and related entities, where we saw an overall 116 percent increase from July to August.”
Wells Fargo and US Bank also saw an increase in such notices, he wrote, while the filings by JP Morgan Chase and Citibank “were essentially flat.”
ForeclosureRadar reported that last month in Sonoma County, the banks held in inventory 1,000 foreclosure homes — properties known as REO, or real estate owned.
In Mendocino County, the figure was 251 REO homes. Mendocino and Sonoma both had the same rate of 6 REO homes for every 1,000 housing units. But Lake County reported 663 REO homes in inventory — three times the Sonoma and Mendocino rate.

Here is a link to the ForeclosureRadar report.

— Robert Digitale