Cleveland County Faces 207 Foreclosures

February 12th, 2008

Cleveland County faced two hundred and seven foreclosures in a period of a little more than a year. There are eighty six cases in the pre-foreclosure state and numerous people have escaped the nightmare of foreclosure over the same period of time. Among the two hundred and seven homes, there are a hundred and sixty eight which have a value of more than $20 million together, on the market. $71,000 is estimated as their median value. Such homes can be found in almost every municipality.

There are isolated cases where single homes have fallen victim to foreclosure and in other cases, such homes are found in bunches. Then several such abandoned homes are found in a neighborhood or on the same street. Foreclosure has affected hundreds of families living in Cleveland County. O. Max Gardner III, a renowned bankruptcy lawyer has kept a watch on the ever increasing volume of foreclosure in the county. From November 2006, according to him, the number of foreclosures had made a jump of 120 percent from the preceding year. He goes on to say that the graph is going up in practically a straight line. Simultaneously, there has been an increase in the number of people filing for bankruptcy as an attempt to keep their homes.

There have been 21 filings for personal bankruptcy for Cleveland County in the month of January alone, at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Western District of North Carolina. The number of houses involved in foreclosure during that period is not known. Gardner’s comments are based on the fact that his grandfather was the state president during the initial period of the Great Depression. While saying that he hates turning people away, he also clarifies that he is not left with any choice. He feels that the situation in Cleveland was probably better than many other places. The list of lenders does not come up with a pattern. The senior Vice-President of Shelby Savings Bank, Rick Washburn feels that the local mortgage brokers generally operate through well-established national companies and therefore, it is the names of thee companies that appear on the list and not necessarily the names of the original lenders.

The mortgage crisis has, in fact, led to the formation of a new law by which it becomes mandatory to put the loan originator’s name on the deed so that origins of bad loans can be easily identified and tracked.