The housing market is showing more signs of mending from the depths of the foreclosure crisis. A new report from RealtyTrac finds banks are repossessing fewer homes than a year ago, and general foreclosure activity has declined for 22 consecutive months. Still, there was plenty of sobering news. The number of homes in July that received an initial notice of default, the first step in a foreclosure, was up 6 percent from a year ago, and nearly 60,000 homes are being repossessed by lenders each month. California has the highest foreclosure rate, with one in every 325 homes receiving a foreclosure notice last month. Guy Cecala watches all this closely as CEO and publisher of" Inside Mortgage Finance," a housing industry research publication. Welcome to you. Thank you, Jeff. So, filings are down, continuing a trend. Explain that part of the equation. What's going on? Well, filings are down basically means that we 're seeing less people getting into trouble and -- due to job loss or some -- basically an improving economy is helping the number of people flowing into the system. But we still have a lot of people who have been in the system for a while and are still facing foreclosure. Before we get to that -- so foreclosure action, I just want to understand what we mean by these numbers. Parse these numbers a little bit for us. What does that mean? Right. Well, there are a couple steps in a foreclosure. Obviously, the first one is you go into default. And legally someone's got to file a default notice, usually the lender, on your -- on their behalf,
