A second wave of foreclosures?

Lee County has seen a rebound in property foreclosure filings recently, but one observer says he's not ready to call it a second wave yet.

In March, lenders filed 794 foreclosure lawsuits in Lee County. That's more than double the 365 lawsuits lenders filed in March 2011.

But Jeff Tumbarello, director of the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investors Association, says March's numbers were nowhere near the peak of the last wave of foreclosures. In the worst months of the real estate downturn, foreclosures totaled more than 2,000 a month.

“Everyone's looking for a second wave,” says Tumbarello, who calls it more of a “bump.” But the properties being foreclosed now are commercial real estate and larger homesteaded properties, and there are fewer of those than the smaller speculative homes that constituted the larger first wave a few years ago.

And the recent uptick in foreclosures may also be due to the fact that many lenders stopped filing last year to clear up the paperwork issues that surfaced. Lenders resumed foreclosures recently as those issues were resolved and they're now catching up with older cases.

In March, the lenders filing the most foreclosures in Lee County were Bank of America (21%), Wells Fargo (17%) and Bank of New York Mellon (9%).