Getting a fix on foreclosure data

As home foreclosures began soaring early this year, Nancy Burns of the Moorpark Redevelopment Agency was told to figure out how many homeowners in her city were in trouble.

The answer, she discovered, was 10.

Or 30.

Or maybe more than 100.

"I have no clue," Burns said.

She's far from being the only one who's bewildered. The federal government compiles reams of data on home buyers and owners, but it doesn't track how or why people lose their homes. Neither do most state or local governments.

A growing number of private outfits are stepping into this void. But the resulting data often are at odds, making it difficult to get a handle on the true dimensions of the problem.

The conflicting numbers are adding an acrimonious edge to the discussion. The dispute gets particularly heated over the figures from RealtyTrac, an Irvine firm that has become perhaps the most widely cited authority in the field.

RealtyTrac's numbers tend to top all other figures because the company counts every step in the foreclosure process -- the notice of default, the auction, the house reverting to the lender -- separately. One house might be tallied several times as a foreclosure.

This is highly misleading, the company's critics say. A Colorado housing official recently called RealtyTrac's numbers "ridiculous and irresponsible." The Mortgage Bankers Assn. chastised Congress for depending on the company's data. RealtyTrac's competitors are becoming increasingly vocal about what they see as its overstatements but are sometimes arguing among themselves as well.

"No one is measuring the truth," said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com. "This is a problem when formulating policy."

Zandi takes issue not only with RealtyTrac for numbers he says are too high but also with DataQuick Information Systems, a La Jolla, Calif.-based research company frequently cited in The Times, for numbers he says are too low. DataQuick and RealtyTrac draw their numbers directly from filings in county recorders' offices.

After four years of boom, the market in California last year definitely turned queasy. But RealtyTrac's numbers show a full-fledged crisis, with 142,429 foreclosure filings -- one for every 86 households in the state, the company said in a February new release.

DataQuick reported less than a tenth of that total: 12,672 foreclosures.

"The RealtyTrac data is overstated, but no way there were only 13,000 foreclosures," Zandi said.