Do filings up 26 percent in Q1 change anything for a first deal?

I read the ATTOM first-quarter 2026 numbers this week. Filings 118,727, up 26 percent year over year. Starts 82,631, up 20. Bank repossessions 14,020, up 45. More than twelve straight months of annual increases.

Then the same writeups turn around and say volumes are still far below 2008 to 2010, and that a lot of distress resolves before auction through modifications and workouts and investors who get there earlier. So the actual supply of deeply discounted bank-owned property hitting the MLS stays modest.

What I want to know is what people actually do with that pair of facts. One reading is that the trend line is the whole story, the pipeline is growing, get positioned now before everyone else notices. Another is that the national number is close to useless because 14,020 repossessions spread across the country is nothing, and the only figures that matter are the ones in your own county. A third is that the trend is real but the binding constraint on most beginners is money and process, so the macro number shouldn't change your behavior at all.

I don't have a settled view. Curious how the room splits, especially anyone who has watched a local market tighten or loosen over the last year and can compare it to what the national print said.