AUSTIN, Texas — An Austin real estate broker has taken an issue with a foreclosure story that's getting a lot of clicks.
It's this story by Culture Map.
The title is meant to catch your attention: "Austin home foreclosure starts jump, according to alarming new report."
The alarming new report refers to ATTOM Data Solution's numbers -- which report a 65 percent increase in foreclosures from May 2017 to May 2018.
The numbers are missing context though, according to Socar Chatmon-Thomas, a real estate broker.
"If they're just skimming this article, everybody's just going to call me and say 'I want a foreclosure home.' We don't have any," said Chatmon-Thomas.
Chatmon-Thomas' expertise started in the 1990s and takes issue with the Culture Map article, especially the first sentence that reads, "Austin, it looks like we might have a foreclosure problem."
"Absolutely 100 percent misleading. The numbers that we have for July of this year (2018) are about a quarter of what we have for July in 2010, which was the height of the mortgage meltdown," said Chatmon-Thomas.
The data shows 126 foreclosures for July 2018.
While that is an increase from the same time in 2017, it's still just a small fraction of the almost 800,000 homes in the Austin-area, as Travis County Tax Assessor Collector Bruce Elfant explained in 2017.
"Number foreclosures as a fraction of 1 percent. That is not an accident. We want to do everything we can to keep people in their homes," said Chatmon-Thomas.
Chatmon-Thomas also said not all those that start foreclosure will even go through the whole process.
"Of the 126, maybe about 30 percent of those actually foreclose. A lot of times people work it out before it goes to foreclosure. The postings does not equal the number of homes that are going to go to foreclosure," said Chatmon-Thomas.
With the 2010 mortgage crisis still fresh on her mind, Chatmon-Thomas wants to public to know we are no where near that.