Foreclosed properties listings in Plainfield, New Jersey will soon feature apartment units after six foreclosure lawsuits were filed against Connolly Properties Inc., a real estate firm that manages 1,130 apartment units in Plainfield and considered the biggest apartment operator in the city.

Based on public records, the latest foreclosure filings have brought to 17 the estimated total number of apartment-managing entities owned by Connolly that have been declared delinquent since June. Connolly owns more than 26 different entities that manage apartments in Plainfield and in three other cities.

The total debt owed by the delinquent entities has reached almost $90 million and six of them have already declared bankruptcy and sought protection under Chapter 11.

The six latest foreclosure filings were filed by six different lenders within a span of 6 days in August. They all were directed at the limited liability companies that own separate apartment buildings, namely The Ritz, Liberty Arms, Executive Arms, Siesta Park, Grand Court Villas and Milton Terrace.

The lenders that filed lawsuits to put the properties into foreclosed properties listings were New York Community Bank, which owned the mortgages of Liberty Arms, Grand Court Villas and Milton Terrace; the U.S. Bank National Association, which owned the mortgage of The Ritz; and JPMorgan Chase Bank, which owned the mortgages of Siesta Park and Executive Arms.

All the foreclosure lawsuits asked court approval for the sale of the apartment buildings to cover the unpaid debts and for the right to operate the buildings and to hire rent receivers while the buildings are being sold to new owners.

The lenders also demanded the payment of loan balances that range from $930,000 to nearly $5 million. Based on the filings, the loans were taken out or assumed between 2006 and 2008 and the Connolly Properties entities stopped making monthly payments in March or May this year.

Out of the more than 1,100 apartment units operated by Connolly Properties, almost 700 units or over 60 percent are in financial distress, with 399 units in foreclosure and 290 units under bankruptcy protection.

David Connolly explained that the high vacancy rates in the buildings and the unfavorable housing market have largely caused his financial problems.

Aside from the threat of having most of its apartments units included in foreclosed property listings, Connolly Properties also faces lawsuits filed by lenders challenging its bankruptcy filings, including Spencer Savings Bank which is seeking almost $20 million in mortgage payment from Connolly Properties.

Market studies find foreclosure listings are growing in African-American communities in Chicago, Illinois. Results showed that vacant, bank-owned properties in the city are concentrated in African-American dominated communities.

According to industry experts, many of these foreclosed properties remained unsold for longer periods of time and incurred greater losses to lenders compared with foreclosure properties in predominantly white communities.

Sixty percent of bank-owned homes from 2007 and the first six months of 2008 were located in black communities. And most of these foreclosed houses took about 25 percent longer to be sold compared with repossessed houses in communities predominantly populated by whites.

Industry experts said that when foreclosure houses were sold, lenders incurred an average loss of 35 percent per property in black communities. In white communities, lenders incurred an average loss of nearly 17 percent on each home.

Experts said that black communities, where buyers can find foreclosure listings increasing, were severely affected by the foreclosure crisis. They said that African-American communities will continue to take a beating from the foreclosure crisis for a longer period of time compared with other communities.

They said that vacant properties are highly concentrated in black communities and these properties take longer to have owners. They added that the longer foreclosure properties remained vacant, the higher the risk of communities to be exposed to the devastating effects of foreclosure homes, including declining home values and crime increase.

Experts said that the fact that many lenders are incurring large losses on foreclosure properties should make them realize that they would be better off working some solutions with distressed borrowers who want to save their properties from foreclosure. Lenders should also be aggressive in pursuing loan modifications to help contain the number of foreclosure properties.

Industry experts recommended that municipalities should be given the right to create and implement vacant property ordinances. Additionally, municipalities should have the authority to go after lenders and make them accountable for maintaining foreclosure properties and to recover costs to maintain deteriorating properties.

Experts also suggested an improved integration of home data to help local governments in evaluating the effectiveness of programs to prevent foreclosures.

Data showed that consumer bankruptcies rose over 1 million from January to September this year. And buyers can find foreclosure listings continuously rising in some parts of the country as filings went up to 1,046,449 for the period.

The pace of home foreclosure listing in Iowa stepped up in July while home sales declined in August, according to data from the Iowa Association of Realtors.

During summer, the state posted a 20-percent increase in its foreclosure rate, adding more than 600 housing units to lists of properties in the foreclosure process. The rate of increase from June was only 7 percent, but the increase rate from July last year was 21 percent.

Total house sales in August fell by 17.3 percent compared to home sales in August last year, based on data from the real estate association. A total of 2,981 houses were sold throughout the state in August, compared to 3,606 homes sold in August 2008.

With a total of 3,190 pending home sales last month, housing analysts contended that the volume of house sales will increase in the coming months as prospective first-time home buyers make their purchase before the federal tax credit expires on November 30.

Terry Knapp, head of the Iowa Association of Realtors, said that typically pending home sales are completed within 30 to 60 days.

In addition, the ratio of asking price to sales price has risen from 94 percent to 95.8 percent, which is an indication that sellers are now pricing their homes more realistically.

Fast home foreclosure listing growth still occur in urban places with large populations, such as in the major metro areas of Polk, Scott, Linn, Dallas, Pottawattamie and Woodbury counties.

In Polk, one out of every 644 units has been hit with a foreclosure filing, more than three-fold the state foreclosure rate. Linn had a foreclosure rate of one in every 1,119, which is twice the state rate, while Scott had a foreclosure rate of one in every 1,192, which is nearly twice the state rate.

Despite the significant increase in statewide foreclosures, Iowa continues to be among the states in the lower portion of foreclosure charts. In the August foreclosure rate chart for all U.S. states prepared by a foreclosure tracking firm, Iowa ranked 41st, with one housing unit for every 1,834 units receiving a default or foreclosure filing.

According to the realtor association, the current pace of home foreclosure listing in Iowa increased by 10 percent compared to 2008 and home prices remained stable. The average time a home stays in the market before getting sold has also decreased, indicating that the housing market is slowly inching towards recovery.

The price reduction effects of house foreclosure listings in Florida have been forcing lenders in the state to reconsider their lending activities to home builders.

Four nonprofit organizations in Lynchburg received about $1 million from the Virginia Neighborhood Stabilization Program which aims to fight the growing foreclosure problem in the state. The group of nonprofit organizations plans to find foreclosed listings and purchase distressed properties to be rehabilitated.

Home values in Reno-Sparks, Nevada are taking a beating from the growing foreclosure problem in the area. For the first six months of this year, over 50 percent of homeowners in the area have mortgages that are greater in amount than the value of their properties.

Some homeowners in Grand County, Colorado are having sleepless nights as foreclosure continues to spread across the area. From January to June this year, filings for foreclosed home listings in the county rose by nearly 30 percent to 110 from 83 in 2008.

The first-time home buyer affordability index in California in the second quarter rose, compared to the second quarter of 2008, according to the California Association of Realtors.

Salt Lake County in Utah is dotted with almost 6,000 empty single-family subdivision lots. These lots have been vacant for a long time now despite improvements made on the area such as utilities, sidewalks and roads. The only thing missing are homes and residents.

Osceola, the county with the highest rate of foreclosure in Central Florida, is set to receive around $14 million from the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program to manage its record number of foreclosure homes.