Oregon may offer a non-judicial foreclosure process, but a pending court case involving the MERS registry and local default rules have caused an influx of judicial foreclosure filings.

HousingWire reported last year that a pending case involving the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems loan registry – along with an Oregon law requiring mandatory foreclosure mediation – could cause banks to opt for judicial foreclosures to avoid legal liabilities in the West Coast state.

According to data from The Oregonian newspaper, that projected trend is taking shape.

The paper says judicial foreclosure filings in Oregon are now up for the third month in a row.

The publication writes:

The volume of such filings has ballooned in recent months as lenders turned to foreclosing in the court system…

Court-supervised foreclosures have become the norm for most residential foreclosures in Oregon after legal changes complicated the out-of-court process lenders had primarily used since the 1950s.