With foreclosures continuing to increase, related concerns are raising their heads in hard hit neighbourhoods. One such problem is that of growing crime.

Boarded up homes and vacant properties are often sitting ducks for negative elements. These houses are prime targets for burglars and are also used for all kinds of anti-social activities. Thus along with the homeowners the entire neighbourhood gets affected.

This fact is borne out by recent studies conducted by the George Institute of Technology and the Woodstock Institute, Chicago. One study shows that violent crime tends to occur more in neighbourhoods that have had significant number of foreclosures. According to the study a neighbourhood which had 2.8 foreclosures for every 100 homeowners also showed an increase in violent crime by 6.7 percent. Another study found that the value of single-owner homes dropped by 0.9 percent for every foreclosure within a block of the property.

It can be concluded that the greater the number of foreclosures in a locality the less safe it is likely to become and the more the value of the other properties is likely to drop.

Robberies on vacant properties can take various dimensions. Small time thieves may target copper piping or break in to steal air conditioners and other fittings. More enterprising criminals are likely to change the locks and rent out the home to unsuspecting tenants!

A few precautions may go a long way in safeguarding both the home and the neighbourhood. When a property is foreclosed and the homeowners move away, neighbours are advised to keep an eye on the home. They can then inform the homeowners or the relevant authorities if they see suspicious people lurking about or the house falling into disrepair. Many county offices offer access to public records which can help locate the homeowner or company.

Police departments too offer guidelines to help protect property. They advise residents not to make it obvious when they leave their homes. By having the grass cut, newspapers picked up and lights turned on and off, an impression can be created that the house is lived in. It thus avoids undue attention.

Attention to security measures is another important consideration. The police advise exterior doors to be made of solid wood or metal with deadbolt locks and heavy duty strike plates. Windows should have secondary locking mechanisms and gates need to be secured with padlocks.

An alarm system that is switched on when then residents are away or asleep is strongly recommended.

The full list of precautions advised by the Houston Police department can be found at www.houstontx.gov/police/crime_prevention/images/Burglary3.pdf

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Florida is one of the states that have been hardest hit by foreclosures. It is ranked second only to California in numbers. In March 2008 alone 30,254 homes were foreclosed in the state.

Like the rest of the state, Hillsborough County in Florida too is affected by this situation.The Hillsborough County office records 400 new foreclosures every week. The numbers are high enough to warrant a special service for investors called Foreclosure Disclosure which publishes a list of foreclosures every week.

Foreclosures are distressing for homeowners and mortgage lenders alike. But there is another group of people who are also concerned about the growing numbers of foreclosures. These are the neighbours of homeowners who have had to vacate their homes due to foreclosure.

Jim Blinck, Hillsborough County code enforcement manager, talks about a property that he had to inspect on West Pocahontas Avenue. A fire inside the house has charred the top portion badly. The house has no roof and the interior is full of gang graffiti, beer bottles and trash with a large bee hive in one corner. Piles of ashes and burnt belongings complete the picture.

Blinck believes that it is possibly neighbourhood kids who started the fire. He opines that empty houses are “an attractive nuisance to children. [I] guarantee kids are the first who will know there’s an abandoned house in the neighbourhood.”

Josephine Stoll, who lives next door to this property says, “[It makes me feel] sick. Sorry, I own a home next to it. It’s really bad-looking.”

Residents who live next door to abandoned homes complain about the disrepair and safety hazards that these houses pose. Overgrown, weed infested gardens, pools filled with algae and piling garbage are just some of the things which make these houses eyesores. Add to this the security risks, rising burglaries and anti social activities and the risk of disease and it is easy to understand why many neighbours are being spurned into action.

To report a foreclosure home that has become an eyesore, you can call the county code enforcement department. The property will then be investigated and the home owners contacted. If the situation is not rectified within a stipulated period if time, then the homeowner or company can be fined. The matter first gets passed to the code enforcement board or to a special magistrate, who then decides on and imposes the fine. These fines can vary from $100 to $500 per day. Very high fines can even lead to a lien on the property.

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The foreclosure filings occurring throughout the first quarter of the year had been some of the worst in recorded history. In Florida, at least one out of 242 households has had a filing. Locally, one out of every 311 households has received a filing.

The current announcement may be taken further ahead with the hope that the foreclosure trend is looking to be on a reversal stage. March had seen Florida and other local areas going through a phase of bad filings. Daren Blomquist of RealtyTrac has said that the month by month data could not be used to keep a track of these foreclosures until such events happened several times.

Mike Larson of Weiss Research, a housing analyst firm, has said that housing sales prices and foreclosure rates will continue to get worse over a period of time for this year. This prognosticated downfall will also see the biggest booms about to be hurt the most during this period.

While home values will keep dropping, the homeowners would get into serious financial trouble. More likely being foreclosed would be their only resort. In this rather unsettling and tough economy, there aren’t many options left in dealing with their properties. So, getting foreclosed seems to be the only way left for most of them.

The combination of weak housing sales along with decelerating home prices, as well as the mortgage lending crisis, and the slow process of the U.S. economy, have all left the entire nation strapped with few options rather than avoiding foreclosures. Many of the buyers cannot get the real value for their homes and get refinanced for an affordable loan. Both the government and the mortgage industry have been trying together in their attempt to stem over the foreclosure tide. However, the rising number of falling home prices has not lessened in any degree.

The statistics in April show that nearly half of the properties of the initial default prices have resulted in new entrants of homes under the list of foreclosed procedures. Roughly the equal amount of home loan percentage has been handled in the most successful way a year back. According to Rick Sharga of RealtyTrac, whatever marketing policy they have tried - to ward off foreclosures does not seem to have really worked for them.

The number of foreclosed homes too do not look to be falling any time soon. More than 54,500 properties have been repossessed by lenders all across the nation in April alone.

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California had the highest number of properties facing foreclosures with 64,683 foreclosed homes and the number being on rise as well. The rate of increase had occurred by 112% from April 2007. However, the number of properties facing foreclosure, have a declining rate which has been less than 1% in fact! The state had also posted records that its foreclosure rates have been the second highest in the country. There are at least one foreclosed household out of every 204 currently while at least one out of every 66 household gets a notice.

The metro areas of California have reported to have had a foreclosure rising by the rate of 6 houses out of every 10 have been involved with foreclosure related crisis. The state of Arizona experienced the third highest foreclosure rate on toe, having one out of every 224 households experiencing it. A whopping number of 11,620 homes have been reported to have experienced at least one filing. This is a rise of 181% compared to what it was last year. While compared to last month, this has been a reported 26% high.

Quite akin to LA and inland areas of California, certain areas in Arizona, received a sharp and cutting run-up in speculation-driven home rates. New homes have come up during the housing boom too. Florida on the other hand has reported to have had 35,264 homes with a minimum of one foreclosure filling during the last month. This is again a jump for the state and it is about a 17% hike as compared to March but a massive rise of 146% as compared to last year. This change into a foreclosure rate of one out of every 242 households had made it the fourth highest nation having received foreclosures.

In Florida in fact, the foreclosures are rather alarmingly back onto going higher. Within the span of a month, the numbers are violently on an up-swing. But, certain good news include that the Sunshine State has been lately passed on by Arizona with their new rates of billowing foreclosures placing them well ahead of Florida. So, a fresh report states an overall lower rate of foreclosures in Florida.

The states to have made into the top ten foreclosure places in the US currently are Maryland, Colorado, Georgia, Ohio, Michigan and Massachusetts. Nationally foreclosures have just gone up by 4% in the total rating as compared to last month and 65% since April 2007. This has had its effect over 243,000 real estate properties. This has also been the highest number of recorded foreclosure rating since January 2005.

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California is in the leads currently with its foreclosure rates soaring way higher than the rest. One out of every 204 households in California now is in some way or the other related to foreclosure. According to a report from RealtyTrac, the rate is just half the total that it used to be in March. Amazingly, there has been an increase by 112% during the last one year. This Irvine-based foreclosure tracker has in fact set all the necessary statistics to keep the foreclosure hike in check.

Followed by California, we have Florida closely on a massive hike with a rapid rise in its number of foreclosures. Foreclosure in Sarasota County, Florida, is up again by 20% since March with about 1,286 filings. The rise has been reported to have been higher by 59% as compared to the first three months of the year. The foreclosure count in Manatee County has been up by 66% to 868 fillings now. Its current rate also states it to be on the rise by 104% since the start of the year.

California has however ruled the foreclosure number game with a huge bulk of its real estate lying foreclosed, and 64,683 properties on the stage of being foreclosed. The danger is great, and has already led to a mass scale economic slump in the state.

States like Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, Maryland, Georgia, Ohio and Michigan has followed suit. Nevada has in fact had an alarming number of one out of every 146 households receiving a filing.

In a more local stage, there has been some fresh news too! Sacramento fell out of the top 10 cities exposed to foreclosures. Instead, it has gone down to no.12 in April. It was in the 5^th position till March 2008 until it fell to the twelfth spot in April. On a national level, the rate of filings has wildly increased by about 65%, still on the rise. As foreclosure filings increased in comparison to last year, about 243,353 properties have been claimed to be on the brink of further experiencing foreclosures! Foreclosure filings now stand at a rate of one out of every 519 homes nationwide.

While California had been seeing a tough time, Missouri had the 20^th highest foreclosure rate this April. In Missouri, there had been one out of every 860 houses receiving a foreclosure notice or a foreclosure filing as it is. Overall, Missouri had around 3,051 foreclosures in the last whole month.

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As more and more foreclosures increase due to homeowners falling behind their mortgage deals, there leaves little to be written or left on account of mortgage payments. The number of filings is slow to be delivered, and the driving number of homes on foreclosure is rising by 65% more, compared to the same time last year. Home values continue their downward spiral on a larger scale than before.

RealtyTrac has not been able to provide the adequate statistics required to note the changes in the greater rate of foreclosures. Whereby home prices have fallen, the number of second-hand houses too has been sold to mainland buyers. The rates in places like Hawaii have been quite higher than Oahu currently, coming as a surprise. Over 243,353 homes have received a nationwide fill-up. During this time last year, there had been just 147,708 homes receiving notices of being foreclosed. So, looks like the rising rates last year did not help much to pack in a corrective measure seal. About 65% higher than last year, foreclosure rates still tend to reach for the skies.

States such as Nevada, Arizona, California and Florida are among the hardest struck under a full blown foreclosure crisis. The upper class metropolitan areas in California and Florida have had nine out of the ten major areas devastated with the highest foreclosure hits. Florida’s rate of foreclosure filings has been particularly alarming in April. The Tampa Bay area has been voted to be the worst among all the metros. A high number of filings (about 35,264) had been recorded with the state of Florida with a 17% rise since March and 146% rise compared to April last year.

Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater have already seen a 9% increase in their filings in April. Florida got edged out by Arizona for its strange and overwhelming rise in foreclosure filings. Nevada and California became the primary and secondary states to have experienced this distinction. The California based real estate statistics firm, RealtyTrac, has kept a count of all these foreclosure filings for statistical and economical analysis. There have also been notices of bank repossessions, auctions, etc. not accounted for here in these figures.

On a widespread nationwide scale, one out of all 519 households received a notice last month. These filings were reportedly on 243,353 properties with a 4% rise as compared to the previous month of March. There has been approximately 65% rise in foreclosure filings in April 2008 as compared to April 2007.

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The number of foreclosures in Hawaii has increased dramatically, with the state having climbed up to reach rank 36, as revealed by a nationwide survey. This is an increase of over 300% more than the recorded rate that is usual for Hawaii. At least a couple of years back, Hawaii was much lower in the foreclosure ranking than it is now. The state reported a 218% increase in foreclosure rates since April 2007. With a 75% increase since March this year, there have been a total of 210 foreclosure cases filed in the last month. One out of every 2,381 households has been on the record as having been foreclosed.

According to RealtyTrac, these are quite alarming reports for Hawaii. The University of Hawaii never had a good way to put a positive spin to the total number of foreclosures on the increase. Research economist, Harvey Sharpiro, had foreclosures trailing massively with a minimal of three to six months. Bonham has also repeated that the acceleration in Hawaii’s foreclosure rates could just suggest that residents got overextended with the rising cost of living in that area. This also resulted in a rise of mortgage interest rates. Hawaii had reported that there had been 22 notices of default altogether with about 181 notices and bank repossessions. The increase in mortgage payments also doesn’t go with the average adjustable-rate loans.

Hawaii has noted 22 notices that have resulted out of default as well as 181 notices that occurred due to trustee’s sales and repossession of properties by the bank. In a nationwide approach, the auction sales made for bank’s repossessions crossed a walloping figure of 243,353 homes in a single month early this year. Also, out of every 519 households, at least one has seen a 4% increase since the last month. Thus nearly 65% of the total property value has gone up since April last year.

Nevada, California and Arizona are the states among other’s which reached some of the highest rates in foreclosure with one out of every 146 Nevada households in foreclosure. This was 3.6 times more than the national average. Hawaii’s foreclosures may have jumped greatly, but it still remains pretty low compared to some of the states heading the highest rates of foreclosures in the country.

Bonham has been reported to have commented, “The sky is not falling,” in regards to the rise in Hawaii’s foreclosures. But, he says that it is getting a bit darker in Hawaii.

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As the real estate industry in Florida keep on hiking up with their giant rise in foreclosures, The Irvine, a California-based company, said that Florida had 35,264 properties involved in some kind of foreclosure related issues in April itself. This is also a rise of 16.6% since March and a height of 146% since a year back. The second highest rate of foreclosure rising is the current one, closely following California. The statistics represent that one out of every 242 homes gets foreclosed here. Though a mere 2% of households keep getting foreclosed nationwide, the present rate of foreclosure rising in any state, contribute a great deal to wreck havoc in the overall economy.

James Saccacio of RealtyTrac reports that in the course of this year, areas in California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona, continue to be particularly susceptible to greater hits of the foreclosure crisis. This would in a way multiply the dangers of incurring higher property taxes, eroding the values of existing homes, and putting the entire municipal budgets into a serious pressure. The bloated inventories to the buying and selling of properties have been largely the result of full grown foreclosures in the above mentioned states.

Areas like Vallejo in California had to file for a severe case of bankruptcy with the report of the sixth highest foreclosure rate in the nation. Both Florida and California continue to be on an upswing with their massive rate of increase in their foreclosures, and 9 out of their top 10 metropolitan areas have experienced really high foreclosure rates. The Tampa-St. Petersburg area does not come in the national highest ranking of foreclosed properties. Nonetheless the main Florida metros, as listed are Cape Coral-Fort Myers at No.5, Port St. Lucie-Fort Pierce at No.9 and Fort Lauderdale at No.10.

Foreclosures.com, however, has offered slightly different statistics, reporting that 44,825 households claimed to be under foreclosure in April itself. This is a rise of about 2.4% since March. Also, this claim makes the foreclosure rates higher by 22% since the beginning of the first year. During the first four months of this year, Florida seems to have experienced a filing of 162,316 which is the highest in the nation so far this year. Hillsborough County’s foreclosure count revealed it to be pretty stable between March and April. But, they are again on the rise by 46% since the start of the year. Pinnelas County is again up by 12% since the last month but they are factually revealed to be down by 8.1% since the count at the beginning of the year.

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Michael Ryder, who is a middle-aged information technology business analyst, has claimed to have slept on the floor of his unheated Winston-Salem home in North Carolina before getting evicted last December. Just like several other homeowners, Ryder had felt flush with equity during the housing boom. At that time, he had impulsively taken a $30,000 loan to build a pool and a deck for his new home. The property itself was bought in 1998 when he even bought a fixer-upper country home where he had in fact decided to reside. However, as Ryder’s marriage collapsed, his wife won the ownership of the county house leaving him with the other property.

As the real estate market softened over the years, he still could not sell off the remaining portion of his house for enough money to offset the rising mortgage bills. He could not even work out a deal in his favor that would have allowed him to stop paying the regular monthly mortgage installment, and therefore, the inevitable followed. As he stopped paying off his mortgage, he soon ended up with his property being foreclosed. So, after foreclosure, now he has nothing left to choose from other than living in a two-bedroom flat that seems a trifle cramped when his son and daughter pay him a visit.

Not only does he miss the pride of owning his own garden home that he can decorate and fix up at his own style, he now has to look forward to paying up and sorting out credits, in the hope of finding another garden house. The mere simplicity in fixing up the lawn of his own garden and painting his own fences gives such owners the pleasure that can never be replaced with owning a flat. He also wishes to leave something behind for the sake of his children.

This rush of accidental rent has seen a rise right after the foreclosure crisis, of which once-property owners like Ryder played a major part. However, this has also come as a boon to the multi-family apartment style housing system. They had previously been undergoing a drop with high rising condo buying. The chief executive of Lane Co. in Atlanta, Bill Donges, reports that his company owns or manages more than 26,000 units across 10 states. In 2006, about half of their units were rental apartments while the remaining half consisted mainly of condos. Now just 95% of rent is for apartments while the condos get a meager 5% of total rent.

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All across the U.S., one now comes across prospective buyers backing out with unhinged doubts about what could lead them out of a property buying deal. No wonder, this is not the most conducive time to bring about new real estate purchases to be made through loans. So, most middle class homeowners back out from any plans that they might have been harboring to make a purchase of a new property. There is an increased fear among buyers or homeowners that, as property prices keep decreasing with more demanding interest rates, they could end up in the vicious cycle of being unable to make payments for something that would be ultimately worth much less in the future.

Missing a payment for six months at a go would lead to a foreclosure, marring all attempts of the investment ventured at. For instance, Daniel Gallego, owner of a warehouse has stated that being a worker in Stockton, Calf, they can ill afford to keep their property with such high and mighty rise up in interest rates.

The present economy is so difficult that a more wary investor like Gallego intensifies that they are going to sell their property at a huge loss than experience something as drastic as being foreclosed. An owner and a family man like Gallego, moves on with his wife and two children to his mother-in-law’s place till further arrangements can be made for the better.

Meanwhile, he looks forward to clearing off some debts and then go on to buy or rent another house. The high rise in the cost of gasoline along with other everyday expenses have led families like that of Gallego, choose this way. Gallego himself does not expect his home value to be higher anytime soon, and this step seems more sensible than waiting for property prices to get higher.

Statistics report that only one out of ten foreclosures has adjustable rate mortgages. This is around half the rate of the actual number declared for mortgages on home loans that were prevalent two years back. Mortgages that started at low interest rates soon become unaffordable for most loaners.

As market conditions change, the mortgage levels keep soaring up, and this has often resulted in a steep and rocky challenge for most loaners. So, there are more and more justifiable reasons for refinancing as well as ultimately losing the property for many people.

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