A leading information portal, Foreclosures.com has recently claimed that the foreclosure tide may have finally started turning.

Specialising in foreclosure related information the company supports its claims with figures that show that the rate of foreclosures appears to be dropping over April and May of this year. The data shows that not only has the number of foreclosures declined by 11.98 % from April but the number of pre-foreclosures too has dropped by 8.89 % in May this year.

Over the past 20 years ForeclosureS.com has collected and analysed foreclosure information and amassed a huge database of more than 5.5 million property listings. The information on the foreclosures is sourced from formal notices filed against a property. These include notices of default, foreclosure auctions and REO foreclosure. The accuracy of the information provided has made ForeclosureS.com a reliable reference point for many professionals.

President of ForeclosureS.com, Alexis McGee emphasises that the numbers reflect her own estimation that the housing market is in a better situation than it would otherwise appear. She points out that buyers are resorting to purchasing foreclosed homes as the number of new houses being constructed has fallen. Thus supply is once again catching up with demand and the housing market is finally reaching rock bottom.

McGee also attributes the turnabout in part to efforts by the government and industry to help homeowners sort out their problems with mortgage and defaulting payments. Today, much is being done by all the concerned parties to ensure that defaulting homeowners avoid foreclosure by working out alternative options.

As an expert and educator in foreclosures, McGee herself has authored The ForeclosureS.com Guide to Advanced Investing Techniques You Won’t Learn Anywhere Else (Wiley) and The ForeclosureS.com Guide to Investing in Pre-foreclosures Without Selling Your Soul (Wiley).

While emphasizing that the monthly figures were cause for optimism, McGee is also careful to point out that the year to date (YTD) figures show that there is still a long way to go before the current foreclosure crisis can be termed over. The YTD data reflects increases in foreclosures since last year. According to ForeclosureS.com, the number of REOs rose by 68.36 % since last year and out of every 1000 households, 117 faced pre-foreclosure. However the monthly REO numbers have started falling recently, which is being seen as a positive sign.

More detailed data and statistics regarding foreclosure filings at various stages can be accessed on the ForeclosureS.com website.

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At Maryland, many homeowners are now being faced with the scourge of foreclosures that are spreading like a plague across the nation. The legislation has now aimed at helping them to rise above the tide of the overpowering foreclosure rates. A House Committee has been set for full-fledged action to take place. This has been one of the set priorities in O’Malley’s administration.

One of the administrative bills as approved of the Environmental Matters Committee, as mentioned before the time of the foreclosures to take place, took from 15 days to about four months to get activated. Another of those resourceful measures that were beginning to be adopted in combating mortgage fraudulence took months to be activated. But finally, the charges for forgery and any sort of crime involved with foreclosures can land a person in jail for up to 10 years’ of imprisonment, or a fine of $5,000, or both.

The legislation enjoys a broad-spectrum support system from some Republican law makers, who have objected to the mindless provisions that allow fraudulent practices in mortgage bills. This would allow particular victims of a suspect practice to sue their lawyers without adequate reason, and can even allow them to do punitive acts of various kinds.

A third administrative bill again, passed at cracking down the accelerating rate of foreclosures, as approved by the panel earlier, is expected to be active soon by the full House. The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee got out a similar sort of bills by Friday having cleared the way for the actions to take place in the Senate.

Del. Maggie L. McIntosh, a Democrat from Baltimore, is also the chairperson of the House panel. She has stated that the bills need extra protection in the form of greater benefit of Maryland’s homeowners so that they can cope with the avoidance of foreclosures in future.

As foreclosures have needlessly skyrocketed across the entire county as soon as the housing market slumped, many a homeowner failed to meet their requisite payments. They have been falling back on monthly payments as interest rates have gone up further and further more. The interest rate set up for mortgages that carry adjustable-rates have also increased as well.

Some of the homeowners in trouble had taken out their “sub-prime” loans even though they have just been pushed to take on greater credit risks with higher-risk borrowers having even lower income rates and lowly credit histories.

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Planned purchase of Countrywide Financial Corporation by Bank of America (BofA) forced over 90 California community groups to send request letters to BofA seeking the halt of foreclosures. California Reinvestment Coalition drafted the letter asking the bank to devise a plan to help these homeowners retain their homes. This bank acquisition adds 9 Million new customers, most of whom are under sub prime mortgage loans.

This acquisition comes amidst a severe credit crunch in the country’s economy, with talks of a recession doing the rounds in many circles. The sub-prime crisis has hit an all-time peak, and real estate companies involved in giving predatory loans have suffered large losses across the board.

The groups requested Bank of America to have a foreclosure moratorium on loans in the banks’ portfolios. They also requested that they retain Calabasas, California as Countrywide’s headquarters and all keep all the employees needed for loan restructuring and modification.

Rhea Serna, a senior policy advocate for the California Reinvestment Coalition said that this merger has the potential to reverse the “bad” loans with Countrywide and enable thousands of homeowners to retain their homes. BofA spokesman Scott Silvestri, however, stated that since the two banks are still separate entities, it is not possible to comment on the status of their future plans. But both parties have a common objective of saving homes from foreclosures wherever possible and will do all they can o help borrowers. They have also announced plans to work with the defaulters.

Pursuing its plans, BofA has filed an application with the Federal Bank of Richmond to get regulatory approval for the acquisition worth $4.1 billion stock deal. The Charlotte bank stated that this filing exempts it from a law which prevents banks from acquiring more than 10 percent of nation’s total deposits through the acquisition route, since Countrywide’s deposits are in the form of loans and savings.

Though the deadline for the actual sale is not yet decided, as the mortgage reverse slide is heating up, California communities are doing all they can to save their homes from coming under the foreclosure eye. They are trying all that they can to save their homes.

The coming days will tell us whether these communities stand a chance to retain their homes, or whether these homes will add fuel to the mortgage crisis plaguing the country, and causing massive losses to the real estate industry in the US.

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Empty houses with unkempt lawns can ruin communities. It becomes a place where crime and vandalism flourishes, and it slowly brings down the prices of the houses in the neighborhood as time goes by.

Sadly, this is exactly what is happening to most neighborhoods where foreclosures have taken place, and especially where they are more than one in the same area.

Foreclosures have reached an all-time high, and have rendered many families homeless and destitute after suffering from the impact of predatory lending. It is not a pretty sight.

A lot has to be done in a very short span of time. There is little availability of affordable housing. More foreclosures will only add to the problem. Experts gave their views at the Regional Housing Forum meeting last week, offering different opinions on how to tackle this problem.

The most logical solution: Stop house owners from declaring bankruptcy. Provide help to the suffering home owner before they are more than 45 days late on their mortgage payment so that they can avoid foreclosure and bankruptcy.

Frank Alexander, a professor at Emory University who is currently teaching at Harvard University says “The likelihood of stopping foreclosures is much more likely in that time period than after 90 days”.

Organizations like the Home Ownership Helpline and the Consumer Credit Counseling Service can aid house owners in restructuring their loans and provide them help in managing their finances. Frank feels that banks should step forward and suggest that house owners should get some help as soon as there is any trouble with the payments. This will prompt home owners to seek aid when they receive this information.

It is also important that the state legislature and the governor should allow an extension in the time taken between the declaration of a default and the subsequent foreclosure sale. At present, Texas and Georgia have the least amount of time taken between the default period and the sale — 37 days. This is hardly enough to give house owners time to sort out the issue.

Frank Alexander, along with his Georgia Tech colleague, Dan Immergluck, feel that it would be more reasonable to offer a ninety day time frame to home owners which will give them enough time and help avoid foreclosure in the long run, especially since it is now in the limelight, and people are getting more educated about the issue.

Immergluck says “These lenders are under pressure from their investors to maximize returns. Yet they need to bring down values of the properties that they own so that they’re affordable”.

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Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has suddenly become extremely perked up about the foreclosure figures that are rising in the real estate segment. It is therefore difficult not to cover his call on some of the state’s major lenders. The call was mainly meant to work to prevent mortgage foreclosures; said homeowners need to better understand the terms of their mortgages so they do not lose their homes.

At a news conference that was held last week, Abbott stated clearly how badly the homeowners were currently facing the risk of foreclosures and why it was extremely crucial for these homeowners to get in touch with the lender or the loan company before any further payments was missed.

It was specifically emphasized by Abbott that homeowners would be easily able to have or take some useful counseling or effective advice from any of the current organizations that are approved for counseling homeowners by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Non profit entities such as Homeownership Preservation Foundation as well as Neighbor Works America were also recommended by Abbott.

Abbott was clearly troubled and anxious about the country’s dismal state pertaining to real estate, foreclosures and the crisis that had hit the country very badly. As a result, the main emphasis of his discussion with the lenders and was more in terms of placid, carefully deliberated words rather than approaching them in a hostile, confrontation oriented way.

A lot of states such as Ohio, New York, and Massachusetts have already indicated higher rates than Texas as far as foreclosures are concerned. Therefore, the Attorney General showed up with several measures that are tough and not easy to implement but were necessary. The tricky way in which legal writing and language veiled the predatory lending practices that guided most home loans was something that Abbot strongly spoke against.

Meanwhile, Abbott heard representations from several leading lending companies that talked to Abbott about the sub prime or adjustable-rate mortgages wherein several of the defaulting homeowners refused point blank to discuss anything whatsoever with the company or the lender. The primary fear of these helpless homeowners was that such a discussion would only pave way to immediate foreclosures process so they refused to discuss the issue. As a result, Abbott issued a statement during last week. He clearly emphasized that lending companies should reach for all the at-risk mortgage holders and ask them to build certain short as well as long reliefs so as to reduce further possibilities of foreclosures.

It isn’t easy to bring forward any kind of crackdown on any of these lending companies that are operating in real estate market but new regulations for obtaining laws may be something for legislators to also consider.

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New York State Governor Eliot Spitzer announced that the lenders and the federal government would be considering some securities funds that are mortgage backed as a means to effecitvely balance the turbulence that has badly rocked the real estate market.

The fund that was thus announced may be something just like the $80 billion pool. That was earlier proposed by none other than Citigroup Inc alongwith some of the other highly established banks.

The main vision of such a pool as envisaged by Spitzer is to bail out those structured investment vehicles also termed for convenicne as SIVs of its countless billions of dollars. Those participants who would be part of such a pool of fund would be competent to put forth or even try to negotiate for new terms on the mortgages. The propelling factor was to make use of effective leadership and streamlined orientation from both the federal government and the private sector, if that’s possible.

There are several well known mortgage servicers that have come together based on the directions that were provided by the U.S. Treasury. The purspose of this get together is serious and meant to improve counselling for borrowers as well as modify affordable payment packages to help desperate homeowners.

There is the well established HOPE NOW initiative. This is an initiative that really helped troubled homeowners because it is a fact that foreclosure are completely unavoidable.

Spitzer announced the future plans to resolve the problem of spiralling rates of home foreclosures at state level. This would defintely help a lot and bring down the risks that are normally associated with the practice of future lending.

The package of initiatives would comprise a grant program for enabling financial stability or support to the groups of worried or desperate homeowners facing the looming problems of either foreclosures or loan delinquency.

The authorities are now aware of the urgency with which it is necessary to seriously implement and improve most of the current practices pertaining to subprime lending. It is not very clear if there are serious concerns relating to the operational level dynamics as to whether the legislation would be able to really get rid of the predatory lending practices.

Most homeowners are expectantly seeking bolder policies to resolve the real estate crisis and increase in foreclosures but the Democratic candidates are cashing on this chaotic situation to publicize their stand. For example, John Edwards’ response is to announce the crucial need to bring forth a prohibitory policy that prohibits most of the current lending practices so that homeowners won’t lose their homes. What the homeowners need is real help, not paper policies.

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Esther Aguilera, CHCI President & CEO said, “The foreclosure crisis we currently face in the Latino community is only going to get worse unless we act now” HOGAR’s, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s National Housing Initiative, recommendations are the first concrete steps we must take to protect countless Latinos from losing their homes. CHCI is a body that is uniquely positioned with 25 Members of Congress serving on the board; its main work is to inform policy makers on the critical implication of their findings.

According to a very recent finding by HOGAR in partnership with NeighborWorks(R) America released the findings of eight national focus groups with Latino-serving housing professionals. It proposed its testimonials for policymakers, community advocates, and market players on how to prevent Latino home foreclosures.

Senator Robert Menendez (NJ) and Congressmen Joe Baca (CA-43) and Albio Sires (NJ-13) were three of who participated in the policy briefing discussing eight focus groups held nationally with more than 90 housing industry representatives. The main groups in focus were held in Austin, TX; Chicago, IL; Denver, CO; Miami, FL; Phoenix, AZ; Washington, DC; and Northern Virginia, areas with both high rates of foreclosure and large Latino populations.

“When so many Hispanics have been sold ticking time-bomb loans, it is crucial that we make it a priority to target this kind of predatory lending” said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ). “I am committed to addressing the mortgage crisis, and I commend CHCI’s HOGAR initiative for making substantive and productive recommendations. It helps people in our communities continue to live the American Dream.”

Rep. Albio Sires, a member of the House Financial Services Committee said “The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s HOGAR program has once again provided valuable insight into the problem that potential Hispanic homeowners face in today’s housing market.” Their recent report names the Sustainable Homeownership - Market and Policy Implications for Communities, looks at guiding efforts in Congress to ensure that homeowners build wealth for their future, rather than lose hope and their home”.

HOGAR\’s recommendations to abate future foreclosures include:

• Methods of flexible underwriting coupled with homeownership education by a trained professional is something that Lenders should be encouraged to continue using
• The Leaders in the housing community should alleviate interaction between real estate professionals and housing counseling organizations to discuss how counseling can help homebuyers get and stay in their homes.
• A system should be developed that allows housing professionals and consumers to anonymously report unethical acts to protect the most vulnerable populations.

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The foreclosures prevention program was just recently unveiled by Governor Patrick. However, despite tall claims on this, it isn’t a program that has won over the support of the mortgage lenders who are active in the real estate scenario.

The plan was obviously meant to be a solution that would assist homeowners. Specifically, the program’s scope was extended to those homeowners who were unable to pay off their mortgage payments which meant that foreclosures would be just round the corner so they would lose the only home they ever had.

There were some lenders who had tried to keep the foreclosures processes on hold believing that it wouldn’t hurt to delay since aid would be forthcoming. But this didn’t last for much time. Eventually, most lenders reinforced their stance, bluntly called for immediate payment and if not, go ahead with foreclosures.

Under the plan that was suggested strongly by Governor Patrick, the state would focus on counseling or securing financial assistance to homeowners who were facing considerable or extreme financial crisis. It was also proposed that there should be creation of recruit neighborhood organizations. These would have to work with homeowners and lenders to resolve mortgages that had become delinquent and thus in danger of foreclosures.

The pilot program would thus focus on six main cities. The following were the neighborhoods that were badly hit due to the mounting incidents of foreclosures in real estate segment, namely: Boston, Brockton, Lawrence, New Bedford, Springfield, and Worcester.

Governor Patrick’s administration exerted considerable pressure over a couple of weeks. The intention was to pressurize those sub prime lenders, whose mortgages were spiraling the mounting number of foreclosures, to somehow agree to provide financial assistance for financially distressed homeowners. By accepting that these homeowners were totally unable to pay off the pending amounts that would spiral further, the lenders would have been pressurized to give the homebuyers some sops.

But a majority of the ambitious, money minded lenders shied away from this plan that was proposed by Governor Patrick’s administration.

The plan also encourages the homeowners to sell their homes at the lower prices of the current real estate market so that the reduced mortgage balance can be paid off smoothly and easily. This is called as short sales but the problem is that lenders would suffer loss over the loan. The administration also directs sub prime lenders to make a payment of $5,000 for each house they foreclosed on. The said money would be used to pay the shifting expenses of the homeowners from their own home to a rental home.

However, while some lenders promise to assist the program, a majority haven’t yet taken to it. Will Governor Patrick’s program gather dust on the shelves?

In a few weeks, we would know.

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A famous author, G.B. Stern stated thus, “Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.”

No doubt, it is a bunch of optimists who always initiate policies that are meant to help others and ward off tensions of any kind. That is why it wouldn’t be wrong to state that despite the growing number of foreclosures in the real estate segment, there were a lot of optimistic efforts from the officials of Oakland and advocacy groups. Together, they proudly announced certain initiatives that were aimed to ward off the unpleasant, eggy mess that has caused such a stink in the real estate industry, namely the mortgage repayment mess.

This recent development has taken most residents in Bay Area by surprise. After all, most of these are homeowners who are completely devastated by the prospect of losing their homes or paying off the fast-rising payments that lenders are demanding or rather, threatening. With such a slump in the real estate markets, only foreclosures seem to be mounting. There didn’t seem to be any ray of hope to alleviate the fears of homeowners till recently.

In this context, the optimists are definitely the officials of Oakland who did the best that they could to put an end to the growing arbitrary and unfair lending practices of lenders. These initiatives would help to curtail the growing money and muscle power of such ruthless lenders who force hundreds of lower-income and minority residents into losing their homes.

In 2001, the anti-predatory lending ordinance was passed in Oakland. Sadly, this ordinance got tossed out by the California Supreme Court in 2005, stating quite clearly that only the state can regulate lenders.

Following Thursday, the Oakland City Attorney John Russo declared the formation of the Oakland Fair Lending Coalition. This, Russo clarified further, would enjoy the support of his office, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), the Center for Responsible Lending, the Oakland NAACP and others.

For helping people understand the foreclosures and slump in real estate, an open hot line would be created by this group in a matter of days. All homeowners or consumers can make their queries directly through the open hot line facility.

This provides a ray of hope for stemming the tide of foreclosures in the real estate segment through similar public education campaigns.

Russo’s office has gone a step further to pressurize the state legislature for measures relating to verification of income, banning of prepayment penalties and much more. One can only hope that for the sake of homeowners, the optimists and their efforts win!

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