40% of All County Judgments of Foreclosures in 2019 Came Out of Jamestown
MAYVILLE – As the county prepares for its annual tax foreclosed property auction on Saturday, recent data shows the number of properties that have received a judgement of foreclosure has been on the rise during the past five years.
Data collected by WRFA from the Chautauqua County Office of Real Property Tax Services shows the number of tax foreclosed properties in Chautauqua County over the past five years has increased by 55%.
According to the numbers provided by Office of Real Property Tax Services Director James Claflisch, the total number of judgments of foreclosure in Chautauqua County for this year was 429. That’s 69 more foreclosures than in 2018 and 152 more than 2015, when the total number of judgement foreclosures was at 277.
During the five years of 2015 through 2019, there were a total of 1714 judgments of foreclosure in the county.
But even though there’s been an upward trend, Caflisch said the 2019 numbers can be somewhat misleading because there was an anomaly this year involving just two property owners who saw dozens of foreclosures between them.
“There was a significant rise in the number of judgments for 2019 because there was a property one owner with 50 parcels in foreclosure,” Caflisch said. “There was also another property owner who had 26 properties in foreclosure which skewed the average numbers we generally foreclose.”
“Chautauqua County has the 12th most parcels in New York State with over 95,000 active parcels. By percentages, we are not much different than other Counties our size for foreclosures,” Calfisch added.
JAMESTOWN ACCOUNTS FOR 40% OF 2019 JUDGMENTS
In addition to providing tax foreclosure data for the county, WRFA also acquired data for all municipalities within the county.
Jamestown had 173 judgments of foreclosure in 2019, which was more than double the 84 foreclosures that took place four years earlier in 2015. The 173 Jamestown foreclosures means the city accounted for 40% of all judgments of foreclosures in the entire county for this year. In 2015, Jamestown foreclosures accounted for 30% of all that were reported in the county.
During the five years of 2015 through 2019, there were a total of 608 judgments of foreclosure in Jamestown – 35% of the county total.
The five year foreclosure totals for Jamestown were 2015-84; 2016-129; 2017-106; 2018-116; and 2019-173.
For 2019, the top 10 municipalities for judgements of foreclosure in the county were Jamestown (173), City of Dunkirk (53), Ellicott (22), Pomfret (14), Cherry Creek (11), Hanover (11), Village of Celoron (10), French Creek (10), Village of Lakewood (10), and Ripley (9).
According to Caflisch, the Judgment of Foreclosure is taken after the 90 day Notice of Petition for Judgment is mailed in January. Caflisch notes that there were also a significant number of property owners who paid the delinquent taxes owed, before the County went to Court seeking a Judgment.
A public auction on all foreclosed properties for this year will be held tomorrow at Chautauqua Lake Central School.
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