However, voices say foreclosures will be up in the short future, mainly because with the foreclosures settlement signed, banks will move forward with foreclosures.

Meanwhile, foreclosure activity in the area fell 28% in January, compared with the same period a year ago, according to RealtyTrac.

In eight of the past nine months, foreclosure activity in the valley was tumbled by double-digits My Desert writes based on the real estate tracking firm’s report.

Distressed home sales are now about 52 percent of the market, down from 60 percent a year earlier, the California Desert Association of Realtors reported.

The trend of declines is likely to end soon, said Bret Cohn, a mortgage consultant and senior vice president of Franklin Loan Center in Palm Desert, and other analysts and economists.

“Although January marked the 16th straight month in which foreclosure activity dropped nationwide from a year earlier, there are signs at the local and regional levels the froze-up foreclosure process is beginning to thaw,” said Brandon Moore, RealtyTrac CEO.

“We expect the pattern of increasing foreclosures to continue in the coming months, especially given the finalized mortgage and foreclosure settlement reached early this month between 49 state attorneys general and five of the nation’s largest lenders,” Moore said.

Foreclosures were down 13% across the Coachella Valley in the last month of 2011 compared to the same month a year ago, the most recent report issued by RealtyTrac highlights.

The total number was 984 mortgage default notices, bank repos and foreclosure auctions filed valley-wide in December, compared to 1,123 recorded in November.

This was good news for Coachella Valley homeowners after the prior month’s foreclosure activity was up 5.7%, ending a a seven month double-digit drop in foreclosure activity.

However, the December drop of 13% could have been larger of Thermal had not posted a 94.7% increase in foreclosure activity. Foreclosures there jumped from 19 to 37 during December, according to RealtyTrac.

“There is also a lot of pressure coming from the White House to try to work with delinquent homeowners to either work out the loans through modification or allow homeowners to ‘short sell’ their homes, rather than go through foreclosure,” Cohn said.

About 5.16% of homes in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario region had at least one foreclosure filing — the fifth-highest rate of 18 in the most recent national report.

Good times are past now, as the Coachella Valley housing market is facing another flood of foreclosures. The data published by Irvine-based real estate data provider, RealtyTrac shows that foreclosures are up 6% across the area in November, compared to the same period a year ago. This ends the seven sunny months of double-digit declines.

The numbers show a total of 1,123 default notices, bank repossessions and foreclosure auctions filed in the Coachella Valley in November, while RealtyTrac recorded only 1,061 the year prior.

The nearly 6% rise in foreclosures comes after declines of 32% in October, 36% in September and 16% in August.

However, this doesn’t came unexpected. Voices in the valley already anticipated that filings will increase as lenders suspended their voluntary foreclosure moratorium they initiated in 2010.

Another reason is the seasonal factor: November brings more trustee sales notices so lenders can get ready to go in January, Jim Franklin of Prudential California Realty and president of the Palm Springs Association of Realtors said.

In Riverside and San Bernardino counties, 11,739 notices of default, trustee sales and bank repossessions were filed last month, marking a 19% rise compared to a year prior and a 25% jump from October, RealtyTrac reported.

The numbers provided by RealtyTrac put the total mortgage default notices and bank repossessions to 1,123, while there were 1,062 a year ago.

This light increase comes after seven months of double digit declines: October recorded 32% drop, September brought 36% and the smallest two digit decline was recorded in August: 16%.

However, the rise in foreclosures did not came as a surprise. Experts anticipated the rise of foreclosure filings as lenders began ending the voluntary suspensions of foreclosure actions they initiated last fall.

Lenders that put their foreclosure process on hold managed to resolve problems with processing and paperwork, said Bret Cohn, senior vice president with Franklin Loan Center in Palm Desert.

“In November, lenders file more trustee sales notices so they’re ready to go in January,” Franklin said. “I think the banks are more sensitive about not taking somebody’s house at Christmas.”

According to RealtyTrac’s recent report, the Southern California recorded a total number of 11,739 notices of default, trustee sales and bank repossessions in November, marking a nearly 20% increase from a year prior, and 25% from a month prior.

The total number of foreclosures recorded last month by the real estate tracking firm was 5,969, which includes mortgage default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions. This means that every 1 out of 130 households were in some stage of foreclosure.

This numbers also means that the number of filings increased 20% from October and 9% compared to a year ago.

Riverside County took the third-highest foreclosure rate position in the state. The first place was taken by San Bernardino County with 1 in 119 households in some stage of foreclosure. while the San Joaquin County ranked second, with 1 in 120 households in trouble. Right after Riverside County there was Solano County, with 1 in 136, while Kern County ranked No. 5, with 139.

Looking at the national picture, California is still on the top three retaining the No. 2 position in foreclosure activity, with 63,689 residences in some stage of foreclosure. The state’s mortgage default has risen 15% compared to October and 11% above compared to a year ago level.

However, foreclosures dropped 3% in the country compared to October with only 224,394 households receiving foreclosure filings last month, and dropped 14% from November 2010, according to RealtyTrac CEO James J. Saccacio.

In Southwest Riverside County, the foreclosure rate fell to 2.1 foreclosures per 1,000 households, down 4.8% from October and down 5.7% from November 2010.

Notices of default were also down n November. The numbers highlighted by the report are: 19.2% compared to October, and 12.2% compared to the same months a year prior.

House prices have been sliding in 2011, especially in recent months. While no median price data is yet available for November, the October median price in North San Diego County fell to $409,058, down 12 percent from 12 months earlier, according to the North San Diego County Association of Realtors. In Riverside County, the median price in October hit $187,000, down 5.6 percent from October 2010, the North County Times writes.

The same report talks about the foreclosure rate in North San Diego County, which dropped 11.8% from October to 0.7 per 1,000 households. The foreclosure rate is down 70 % from its peak in July 2008.

The same report highlights October’s median price: $240,000. The mount is 3.6% less than $249,000 paid in September, and down 6.3% from $256,000 for October a year ago. The median dropped even on a year-over-year basis for the last thirteen months.

Distressed property sales continued to make up more than 50% of the state’s resale market.

Foreclosures accounted 34.1% of October’s total resale numbers, which means a slight increase from 33.8% recorded in September but down from 36.7% a year prior. The all-time high was in February 2009 at 58.5%.

Short sales accounted an estimated 19.5% of resales in October, which means the demand for short sales increased from 18.6% a month prior and 18.2% a year earlier. Short sales made up an estimated 15.9% of the resale market in 2009.

About 735 homes sold in Coachella Valley in October, with Indio, Palm Desert and Rancho Mirage leading the list.

On the other hand, Riverside County recorded a 7.3% drop in home sales with only 3,026 deals closed last month, while San Bernardino reported a nearly 2% decline compared to the same period a year prior, with only 2,300 homes sold in the same period.

Bank owned properties accounted 54% of single-family home purchases and 45% of condo transactions in the Coachella Valley, which means a 6% drop compared to 2010, according to California Desert Association of Realtors.

“52.5% of sales in Southern California were distressed properties,” DataQuick reported. According to the My Desert, nearly one out of three homes in the Southland resold last month  was a foreclosure, and about one fifth was a short sale.

However, bargain price hunts pushed Coachella Valley’s median price down with fell 8.5% to $166,000, DataQuick reported.

According to CDAR the valley’s median price was $179.975 for October, while the average sales price hit $281,360.

The numbers tracked by RealtyTrac show a total of 1,076 mortgage default notices, bank repossessions and foreclosure auctions filed in October. This number is down from 1,571 in October 2010.

But there are signs the downward trend may be easing locally and elsewhere, analysts and mortgage consultants said.

Valley foreclosures rose 4.4% in October from September, for instance, when 1,031 notices were filed, RealtyTrac highlighted. On the other hand default notices reached 569 in October from 471 in September.

DataQuick’s statewide report highlighted a 25.9% jump of default notices, reaching  71,275 households in California in the third quarter compared to the previous quarter.

Bret Cohn, senior vice president with Franklin Loan Center in Palm Desert, expects to see month-over- month increases in foreclosure activity as lenders continue resolving problems with processing and paperwork, and many people realize their “modified loans” are not in their best financial interest.

“Also, the Obama administration has continued to try to push initiatives to allow homeowners to stay in their homes or resolve their situation through short sales rather than foreclosures,” Cohn said.

He said that bank-owned sales and short sales will continue to account a significant percentage of the home sales activity in the area, but until banks agree to lower delinquent homeowners’ loan balances to what their homes are worth.

Coachella Valley inventory of bank-owned and short sale properties shrunk with the drop in foreclosure filings, Coachella Valley Realtors and the Desert Area Multiple Listing Service reports show.

RealtyTrac reported the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metro area ranked as having the fourth highest foreclosure rate in the nation during October, with one foreclosure filing for every 143 housing units.

The report highlights the numbers: 4,949 mortgage default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions recorded in October, which means 1 in 157 households in some stage of foreclosure.

Foreclosure filings increased 1.52% from September, but were down 24% compared to the same period of 2010.

The county ranked seventh-highest in the state in foreclosure activity. San Joaquin County was No. 1, with 1 in 143 households in trouble.

Looking at the wider picture, the report highlights that California retained its second place  in foreclosure activity, with 55,312 houses in default, mirroring a jump in activity throughout the country. The state’s default rate was 7% higher than in September, but 17% below the year-ago level, KESQ reported.

James J. Saccacio of RealtyTrac commented the report saying the lenders managed to work they way out of the foreclosure backlog, which was increasing with their voluntary suspension due to  problems with document-filing and poor record-keeping. But this is now over, so we can expect an increase of foreclosures in the upcoming months.

“However, recent state court rulings and new state laws keep changing the rules of the foreclosure game on the fly, creating more uncertainty in the housing market and threatening to prolong the road to a robust real estate recovery,” Saccacio said.