Foreclosures Drop in April, but Don’t Get Excited

The rate of new foreclosures has reached its lowest level since spring of 2008, according to the Wall Street Journal.
While this sounds like a good thing, optimists should proceed with caution. The main factor in this slowing of the foreclosure rates is not an absorption of inventory into the market (which would be a genuinely good thing for the stabilizing of home values), but the fact that banks are simply proceeding more slowly due to an agreement to restructure their admittedly-faulty systems for processing foreclosures.
You may ask, Is it even possible for banks to resolve the foreclosure crisis more slowly than they already are? The answer, it seems, is a resounding “Yes”.