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Posts Tagged ‘Foreclosure Rates’

Foreclosure Crisis Continues In All Corners Of The Country

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008

Lately, the foreclosure crisis has posed to be one of the single most intimidating factors in the nation’s real estate sector. There has been a huge slump in the overall economic conditions, affecting the national economy in a big way. While some places had their foreclosure rates subsiding this March, many saw things flaring up again in April.

There has been a 9.4% cessation in March which again hiked by a further 34% in April. On a broader, national level, there has been 243,353 foreclosure filings. This was 4% higher in March and about 65% higher since April 2007. RealtyTrac reports that there was at least one foreclosure filing for every 519 households in the country.

Illinois was recorded as the 13th highest foreclosure state lately with one filing taking place for every 620 households. This has been a 1% increase as compared to last April. Nevada has in fact recorded the highest foreclosure rate with one filing out of every 204 households. Arizona came in third having a single filing every 224 households.

California being on the top slot had one filing out of every 204 households which is still the second highest foreclosure rate. Arizona came third with a foreclosure filing rate of one out of 224 households.

Irvine, California based RealtyTrac has stated that the national database of foreclosures as well as bank-owned properties has crossed over 1.5 million, from across 2,200 counties, all across the US. While this has been the case with the heart of the country, our focus also shifts to the foreclosure impact in Hawaii. There, the foreclosure rates have indeed climbed up by 218%.

Hawaii’s foreclosure rates have in fact tripled during April. With a whopping and mind boggling hike of over 218%, this has occurred to the state in a really short time! The state’s rank in foreclosure ratings was 36 on a national level last year. An online database concluded that it had 210 foreclosures filed, at the rate of one out of every 2,381 households.

Local economists have commented that it is however quite early to attribute any one factor or a group of factors for the upsurge in foreclosure rates. Even the recent collapse of Aloha Airlines and ATA has not affected the foreclosure rates that rapidly. Economist Carl Bonham finds these recent incidents in fact, could not have been the sole reason for this. There have been over 200 people who have lost their homes due to these reckless property dealings and transactions.

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Foreclosures Rates Continue To Rise Unabated

Thursday, May 29th, 2008

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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Assembly Helps To Steady Foreclosures In Maryland

Friday, April 18th, 2008

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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Foreclosure Rates Set To Rise Further This Year

Friday, April 18th, 2008

In an unexpected development last Tuesday, property statistics company Realty Trac reported that foreclosure filings for the month of March 2008 have actually gone up by 57% compared to the same period last year.

Painting an exceedingly grim picture for the near future, this report showed that more and more people are not being able to keep up with their mortgage payments despite continued measures by the government to stem this flow of foreclosures that are haunting the country today. The report shows that there has been a foreclosure filing for one home in every 538 homes in the country.

The hardest hit states were California, Nevada and Florida, and over 234,000 houses were up for foreclosure last month in March. Due to mortgage loans being reset to even higher interest rates on adjustable-rate loans, making monthly payments on the same mortgage has gone up, causing foreclosures to increase even more. According to Rick Sharga of RealtyTrac, this trend is expected to continue, with the rate of foreclosures set to climb further due to ARM resets set to continue till late this spring. Loss in property values and unemployment are also expected to add to this problem.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com states that “We could argue this is the worst housing downturn ever. Negative equity and unemployment are the driving factors. Things are getting worse, not better.”

A good case in point would be Wayne Willsey of Crestview, Fla. Wayne works at the local power company, and is looking at a possible foreclosure. This is largely due to a reset on his ARM loan which has increased his monthly mortgage payment from an affordable $2,100 to a whopping $4,000! Wayne adds “I keep praying; it’s really hurt the family bad. I’m 55, and it’s hard to start all over again.”

Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research adds that “This isn’t a sub-prime problem. The underlying issue is housing prices are falling. It’s going to get worse. Sub-prime (foreclosures) may have peaked and will start to trail off. In terms of the rest of the market, we’re just beginning.”

A massive problem has also been the falling real estate prices. There are many homeowners who are finding that it doesn’t make any sense to continue making payments for a home that is worth a lot less than what they paid for it. In a few cases, it has been seen that it is a lot easier just to walk out on your mortgage than continuing to pay a higher price at very high interest rates.

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Foreclosures Hit Rural Communities In California

Thursday, April 10th, 2008

Foreclosures are now hitting even rural communities in Places like Merced, California, where only six people turned out for a foreclosure auction recently. You could say that the end was swift and brutal, especially for the Pimentels, whose dairy farm was the first offering of the day.

Despite the auctioneer taking his time reading their details and offering it to any buyers present, no one came forward to stake a claim for the property. Ultimately, the Joe T and Janice R Pimentel Dairy Farm officially became the sole property of the lender, who was its chief creditor.

Janice Pimentel said, “Well, that’s that.”

This farm was once a regular fixture here in California’s Central Valley, which has recently been ridden with foreclosures throughout the countryside. Pity that it was once known as the ‘world’s fruit basket’. A lot of the properties here have become victim to foreclosure, and the entire face of rural towns are changing due the country’s real estate meltdown that has been happening for the past few months.

When news about foreclosure spreads, you rarely get to hear about the current situation in rural America. The general focus is always on upcoming counties and major cities. Well, foreclosure has hit rural America, and hit it hard!

According to research by a Washington-based non-profit organization called the Housing Assistance Council, which helps build rural housing all across the country, foreclosures are as prevalent in small towns as they are in the major cities. It’s the same story all over again, says HAC executive director, Moises Loza.

In fact, research also showed that foreclosure rates were higher in some parts of rural America as well. As prefab and mobile housing units make up around 15% of all rural housing in the country, it was seen by the HAC that almost 75% of these were bought with personal housing loans or on instalments as opposed to mortgages. When owners would default on their instalments, their homes were immediately repossessed by the lender or loan provider. As they were repossessed, the data would not show up in foreclosure data, as they were not formally foreclosed.

Rural property owners also have less choice when it comes to picking a lender, and were often seen to fall prey to predatory lending or pay high interest rates. It becomes difficult to track rural housing data, as they are not governed by the same laws, and are not required to file mortgage and lending activity like banks in metropolitan areas have to do under federal law.

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Foreclosures In Virginia Up 30%

Tuesday, April 8th, 2008

The state of Virginia experienced a total of 5,152 filings for foreclosure at the rate of one filling out of every 616 homes. This has been onto a 30% increase as compared to the filings of last month. Virginia’s foreclosure fillings rated it 14th in the nation’s foreclosure rankings this month. This has accounted for 2% of the nation’s widespread foreclosures.

Of all the foreclosures in the US, foreclosure filings had rocketed to a whopping 223,001 filings in January. This is an 8% increase from the last month of the previous year! To alleviate matters, and curtail a further rise in this rate of foreclosures, the Federal Reserve had proposed for an even more restricted set of norms to be applicable for mortgage as well as lending practices.

The set of rules include that the lender will have to verify the borrower’s steady income before letting him embark on any sort of property dealings. In addition, for a loan to be allowed to pass, the local mortgage broker has to be very careful with their dealings. Without careful considerations on the part of the broker in the past, many landowners have in fact got into trouble!

The loans which were originally made required lenders to verify the borrower’s income, considering various sides to it. Those loans were only supposed to be made to self-employed homeowners who held many tax write-offs. According to Ron Price of The Mortgage Centre in Winchester, this verification, had it been very strict, could not have led into such a widespread number of foreclosures. In the past few years, however, the guidelines had loosened up so much that nothing but an escalating number of foreclosures could be accrued out of the entire scenario! However, with such scaling numbers now meant to be controlled, the borrowers have no choice but to meet a minimum amount of credit score to get the loan.

Brian Hester, the co-owner of Heritage Home Funding in Winchester firmly remarked that no longer would lenders be given money for houses that they could not afford to keep up! As this has been the case in the recent few years the credit rating checking has been made pretty high and very strict after this January. As too many people with lower income rates got away with the loan, all these foreclosure problems took place. Hester also stated that the Fed’s opinion on how to keep the foreclosure rates plummeting down also seemed refreshing and welcoming. According to him, the Fed has decided for some great turning points to take place in the recent real estate business and thus its recent downfall can be turned around for something better!

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Foreclosures Hit A 57% High In January

Tuesday, March 18th, 2008

Homes in U.S. have increased by 57% in January as compared to last year. The pace with which the foreclosure rates had increased had got under control since the government intervened. According to RealtyTrac, these measures have helped to subside the rate of increase of foreclosures.

Mortgage companies as well as counsellors as endorsed by the Treasury have helped modify the intense risk-rates. The aim of these measures has been primarily to endure the affordability of these real estates as well as enable the homeowners to keep their homes with themselves.

The rate of foreclosure fillings in January had a rise of 8% compared to the month before that. The real estate market has reported on the last week of February that foreclosure rates had spring up to a 19% rise a year back. James J. Saccaccio, the main executive of RealtyTrac, had stated that January’s foreclosure trends had gone up from a substantially increasing rate as compared to last year in many of the states in the country.

During the month of January itself, foreclosure activities had gone down by a massive rate. However, it has remained substantially higher and sharper than what it was a year back.

Some of the efforts by the lenders and the government took place from a state as well as the federal level, working well, according to Saccacio. The primary question was on the efforts in the long-term basis. If only a temporary forestalling of the foreclosure crisis is being experienced then these measures are not worth the deal. Most of the borrowers have tended to be more than slightly edgy with the relative dicey state regarding the foreclosure matters.

Foreclosures in Nevada, California and Florida have been reported to incur some of the highest rates in the first month of the year. Nevada has reportedly maintained the hot notch with a foreclosure filling number of 6,087 properties. While it was just less than 45% in December, the rate had gone up to more than 95% in Jan. 2007, as stated by a survey by RealtyTrac.

The dwindling home prices has majored the problem extensive in the lax market of real estate. The reports by RealtyTrac has even stated a large number PF default notices, pairing with auction sales as well as bank repossessions taking its toll over 233,000 houses. Only time will tell if fed measures are able to stall more homes from falling prey to foreclosure.

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Virginia´s Governor Seeks Help For Foreclosures

Thursday, March 13th, 2008

The governor, Timothy Kaine seeks help for meeting the demands of mortgage faced by borrowers of that area. Most borrowers being on the verge of facing foreclosures, this has been a primary concern for the development of the state. The rapid stemming up of foreclosures in Virginia has made it impossible to make a good commercial progression in the area of real estate business. Thousands of Virginians are on the crisis of losing their homes. There are still others who have already given up and shifted in the passage of the last two years.

The Governor’s new plan, as introduced in the General Assembly on Monday at had posed that certain lenders in the real estate business would have the responsibility to warn borrowers against the perilous positions and risks involved with a particular transaction. They would also have to forearm the borrowers with a grace period, which would enable them to come back on track with their financial defaults. Some resources would also be arranged on some cases to help them make their existing loans paid back. A representative of the governor, Gordon Hickey, has also commented that this would be an effective enough plan to help the thousands from losing their homes in the state.

The plan also includes external help in the form of appropriate financial counselling, the arrangement for pooling in other forms of resources in order to combat the problem with payments and so on. All these have the aim that the properties are not foreclosed at any cost.

The Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley had also announced a plan on the similar vein prior to Kaine, in fact. Kaine is also looking forward to broach these regulations to the General Assembly in its scheduled adjournment of March 8.

In the last one year, foreclosure rates have accelerated like nothing else and have been a nationwide concern. The heavy number of rash and impulsive loans fuelled by a large number of unsafe loan scheme, have all generated to provide this state of unmitigated amount of foreclosed properties. The number of homes foreclosed has in fact risen up by 57% in this January itself when compared with last year. This statistic was conducted by a research firm dealing with real estate properties.

This plan will help homeowners in keeping their homes, and allow them to repay their outstanding dues. It remains to be seen how effectively this will help stem the flow of foreclosures in the county.

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Rising Foreclosure Figures In Detroit Area

Monday, March 10th, 2008

Default Research is one of the chief sources of real estate and foreclosure information based in the Detroit area. According to them, the rate of foreclosure has made a jump of 38 percent in Michigan in January 2008. Default Research reports that in January 2008, 2,501 houses in Wayne, 713 in Macomb and 588 in Oakland were facing foreclosure.

In 2007, the Detroit area was one of the most badly affected areas. Even though the rate of foreclosure is still on a steady hike, Default Research predicts that this year should be less devastating than the previous year. Sardar Bankaci, the founder of Default Research says that t according to the research, in Detroit, the foreclosure crisis was at its peak during the last year. He goes on to say that there has been a fall in the housing inventories over the last six months. Also, even though the median prices are still declining, they are on the process of leveling out.

The Michigan foreclosures were at the heart of the nation’s foreclosure crisis. Thus this was indeed a very positive indicator with respect to Michigan foreclosures. 2.65 percent of the homes in the Detroit metro area went into foreclosure in the previous month. The effect of recession has had quite a widespread impact and it prompted the officials from Washington D.C to take action in the form of lowering the rates of interest.

The company feels that this policy is going to be extremely popular among the clients based in Michigan as well as people across the nation who are looking forward to making investments in foreclosed properties. Bankaci says that now that the interest rates have been lowered, people will find that real estate is a good tool to make profit and simultaneously, it will also help families who are facing foreclosure crisis. Bankaci feels that this is a very good opportunity of buying and renting properties as well as quickly receive a monthly return on the investment.

Those mortgage brokers who were using the lists would now be able to provide the home owners with lower rates of fixed loans and the home owners could be refinanced accordingly. Moreover with the lowering of interest rates the banks were willing to approve of more loans. As a result, the investors have more credit to make pre foreclosure purchases. Also, even the homeowners have access to credit and can make a purchase. More information about Default Research can be found on their website: www.defaultresearch.com.

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Knox Knocked By Over 47 Percent Increase In Foreclosures - I

Wednesday, March 5th, 2008

Imagine losing your house on Valentine’s Day! Well, John Tubbs could have lost his in Knoxville. However, there is some silver lining as his home has not come under the auctioneer’s guillotine at the court house.

Many more residents like Tubbs in Knoxville have been deeply affected by the foreclosure crisis which is showing no signs of slowing down. Though the residents have not remained isolated from the crisis, they have not been overthrown by it either, unlike the situation in many other metro areas.

RealtyTrac, the real estate research firm recorded Knoxville to have 2770 filings in 2007 as compared to 1813 foreclosures in 2006, showing a whopping 47 percent increase. Things could get a lot worse, people say.

Knoxville was ranked 72nd in the top 100 metro areas of the nation hit by the foreclosure and mortgage crisis. With Nashville ranked 59th, the Memphis area was ranked 13th with over 22,000 foreclosure filings recorded in 2007.

The Detroit area takes the top position with the highest foreclosure rate with over 5 percent of its households holed up in some stage of the foreclosure process. A sluggish market and increasing rate of unemployment have added to the areas housing woes. The area is reported to have an increase of 4.8 times more than the nation’s average rate of foreclosures. As we can see, this is far greater than most counties in the country.

RealtyTrac reported that several other cities in California were close behind Detroit, with a total of over 1.3 Million properties up on the foreclosure list.

Director for University of Tennessee’s Center for Business and Economic research, William Fox stated the following reasons for the consistently high rate of foreclosure in the nation:

  1. Lending institutions aggressively marketed their loan products and this practice mad them lend to those borrowers who were not financially as healthy as these loans require the borrowers to be.
  2. Increasing rate of unemployment is only adding more homes on the foreclosure list as people are not able to pay their mortgages in time
  3. A sluggish home market is also making it difficult for people to sell their homes at a reasonable price so that they can get out of the mortgage tangles.

A mix of all these reasons is keeping the foreclosure rate steadily high. It remains to be seen whether the coming months hold any reprieve for this area at all.

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