The tremendous increase in foreclosures in Virginia has heavily affected the real estate industry of the region. It has been found that the foreclosure rate has almost tripled in July 2008 than what it was in July last year. Half of these foreclosure homes have been arrested in Northern Virginia. In July, the highest rate of foreclosures has been found in the Prince William County where one out of every 103 households was facing foreclosures. Nearly 1,728 homes were in a foreclosed state in the Fairfax County and about 169 homes were facing foreclosure in the Loudoun County. Out of every 1,357 households in the Arlington County were facing this real estate problem.

However, the increasing rate of foreclosures has increased the home sales throughout most of these regions. The decrease in the value of homes have made a large number of buyers to buy them, which otherwise would have been impossible for them to afford. It has proved especially beneficial for the first time buyers in the Prince William County. The median price of home has come down to $214,000 from $354,450 in the Prince William County.

The median home price in the Fairfax County has declined by 17 percent having a small impact on home selling activity. The median home price in the Loudoun County has fallen by 20 percent in comparison to the figure of last year’s July. There has been a marginal increase in the home selling activity in this region. However, the development of the real estate market depends on the decrease in the rate of foreclosures.

Nationally, Virginia accounted for the 10th highest rate in its number of foreclosures. There were a total of 5,745 foreclosure filings last month. According to a real estate expert Rick Sharga, the 10th position is not that bad as compared to the severe condition in California and Florida. There has been an increase of 55 percent in foreclosures in US in the month of July this year as compared to the same period last year.

James J. Saccacio, another real estate expert has said,

“Bank repossessions . . . continued to be the fastest-growing segment of foreclosure activity in July. The sharp rise in [bank repossessions], combined with slow sales, has resulted in a bloated inventory of bank-owned properties for sale.”

Some feels that there will be an improvement in the real estate market in the coming year after the November election of this year.

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There has been a decline of over 10 percent in foreclosures between the first and second half of 2008 in the Charles County. Despite this, the number of home foreclosures has almost doubled in comparison to what it was at the end of the second half of 2007. The decline in the number of foreclosures however has no positive effect on the real estate mortgage. People are continuing to face the mortgage problems. It has been found that the Charles County has 4 percent of foreclosure statewide in the second half. Some of the experts think that this foreclosure is taking place as several homeowners who are moving from Washington are charging higher mortgages for larger homes.

La-Ronda Johnson who is the senior housing counselor of the Maryland Tri-County Community Action Committee has found that a majority of the people seeking help from them to deal with their foreclosure problem are from Charles County. The other areas hit by foreclosures are the St. Marys and Calvert County. 20601, 20602 and 20603 were the Zip codes of the Southern Maryland’s three hot spots in Waldorf. Among these Zip codes the worst affected one is 20602 where one out of every 77 homes is facing foreclosure. Calvert County’s hot spot is in Lusby.

The high foreclosure rate in the Charles County is standing as a big problem for the county agencies. They are finding it difficult to make an adjustment between the decreased property tax revenues and increased utility costs. A high rate of home foreclosures has been also arrested in Baltimore and Montgomery County. This has tremendously affected the real estate of these two places. Nearly 32 percent of all the foreclosures in Maryland have been found in Prince George’s County. The rate of foreclosures was at par with the population in the counties of Calvert and Mary’s. However, these counties have still a rate of foreclosure that shows a major spurt from the last year.

There has been a serious problem between the Charles Board of Commissioners and the school board over the education budget of the Charles County. The Charles Board of Commissioners is unable to find enough funds for the increases demanded by the school officials. The members of the Board of Education have said that if one becomes so conservative in financial matters, it is surely going to hamper the quality of public education in the Charles County. This has made the commissioners take a decision of increasing the cost-of-living fund for school employees by 3.5 percent.

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The decline in the value of home in the Las Vegas valley by almost 30 percent has made many think that the worst phase of the real estate crisis is over. However, there are many experts who think that a second wave of foreclosures is likely to take place soon, may be in the coming few months. They are envisioning that a large number of homes in Las Vegas valley will be left vacant by the distressed homeowners. The situation is really tough and they feel that the people should stop thinking that the bad phase is over. They consider two things that are to be blamed for foreclosed homes. These are the ninja and the liar loans.

Ninja and liar loans have been one of the biggest reasons behind foreclosures in Las Vegas. It has played an important part in forcing the real estate of the valley fall into the foreclosure activity. With the change of rates in the month of September, it is expected that the problem is going to be worse. The liar loans allow the homebuyers to tell a lie on their yearly income. This helps them get a bigger home for themselves avoiding the scrutiny by the bank.

Some of the realtors feel that the prices of home wont decline further. However, the greatest worry for them is that an increasing rate of foreclosures means an increase in supply. This will be instrumental in bringing down the value of homes. The ninja and liar loans are considered by many as villains in the real estate market. They make the foreclosure situation worse. According to Realtor Cynthia Glickman,

“Oh yeah, look at these people, you know. They’re liars. They’re getting what they deserve.”

It has been subservient in staining their reputation.

The word ninja means No Income, No Job, No Assets. The ninja loans are given out to those who does not have money or right by which they can afford a home for themselves. The borrower of these loans assumed that the prices of homes are going to move up. This made them less bothersome about their repayment. The lenders thought that the ever flourishing real estate market would continue to expand. It’s a warning for the borrowers of liars and ninjas that the change in rates in September means that their monthly payments are going to be up. This means more foreclosures are waiting in the coming days.

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Although there have been an increase in home sales in the western region of US, but the Philadelphia area has been reported with a down market in real estate home sales. There has been a decline of 22.6 percent in July in the eight counties of Philadelphia in comparison to the figure last year during the same period. It has been reported that the average home price have declined from $240,000 to $234,000. The ongoing foreclosure has proved heavily bad for Philadelphia area real estate. The month-to-month home sales were 9 percent down in the Philadelphia metropolitan area, which nationally showed an increase of 3.1 percent in July from the figure of June.

The median home prices of the real estate nationally fell by 7.1 percent from July last year to $212,400 from $228,600. According to economist Brian Bethune,

“While the bounce in July existing sales is a welcome improvement, the housing market still suffers from high inventories,”

It has been found that nearly 21,000 houses in the 6 counties of Southern California were sold in July. About 9,156 houses or 43.6 percent of these houses sold were a property facing foreclosure. There have been over 64 percent transactions in the foreclosure sales in the Orange County, one of those 6 counties. The median sale price for the 6 counties of Southern California declined to 31.1 percent year-over-year in the month of July.

Like California and Arizona, Pennsylvania did not face the absurd home-value inflation. It has been fortunate enough to escape it. As put forward by economist Rick Sharga, Pennsylvania,

“which saw home prices increase at somewhat more reasonable levels, didn’t have as high an incidence of consumers buying too much house with risky loans,”

Only those places have faced such a heavy home-value inflation that is tied up in the ongoing foreclosure cycle. The rate of foreclosure in Philadelphia for June stands at 1.1 percent. According to economist Joel L. Naroff, “This has been the story of the region for the last two decades,”

The most problematic areas in the real estate market currently are those that were overvalued during the housing market boom of 2006. The buyers here are suffering from risky loans. The median home price of July, which is $234,000, is lower by $1,000 than the figure of July, 2006. Naroff has said,

“more and more, it appears that the existing-home market [nationally] has bottomed, even if the large number of homes on the market means prices may continue to fall,”

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The increasing rate of foreclosure homes nationwide has led to the introduction of a new program by the Yorktown Division of Housing. This program aims to provide help to the people in fighting the real estate foreclosure. A total of 5,800 foreclosures have been recorded across the state in the second half of 2007. Out of these, about 4,000 were a case of subprime loans. The newly introduced program follows the method of the Virginia Foreclosure Prevention Task Force that was created after the rate of foreclosures between 2006 and 2007 increased in Virginia. From January to June, a total of 22 foreclosures among 24,000 residences have been recorded in Yorktown. The rate of foreclosures has been low at less than a percent in James City, Yorktown, Mathews, Poquoson, and Williamsburg.

The program of Yorktown includes a mortgage and credit counseling education to those who are standing on the brink of foreclosure homes. According to the manager of the Division of Housing, Vaughn Poller,

“In the past we’ve not had to confront this issue, but we are proactive in our approach to services and are concerned that in the current economic climate the need could grow,”

The program provides valuable information on home purchase financing, debt management, and budgeting. These programs were earlier meant for the first-time homeowners. The partnership of Yorktown with James City Housing Office will offer residents of the upper county to get services on counseling if they are unable to get to the offices of Division of Housing in Yorktown. The new program will however not provide any help for mortgage payments.

According to Poller the housing division is soon to get a HUD certification whereby the HUD counselors will be trained in areas such as credit counseling, foreclosure prevention and homebuyer education. Apart from these, the other area resources include the Greater Peninsula United Way First Call program and Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Hampton. The housing division provides referrals to agencies like Peninsula Catholic Charities and also certified housing counseling to US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Poller has said that one needs to be careful about their finances to avoid the problem of foreclosures.

One should not avoid their real estate mortgage companies as put by Poller. He has said, “Our focus is to provide the public with counseling and information resources to encourage them to take precautionary steps to avoid foreclosure proceedings,” One should always seek for a financial guidance in case he/she has failed to make re-payment.

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The problem of foreclosures has also been hitting the middle and upper middle class families. This is affecting people from all income groups and professions. The scenario is worsening day by day. The slow pace of US economy together with the tight mortgage terms and conditions are responsible for it. Hampton Township is one of the well to do areas with a large number of upper middle class families living there. It has been observed that about 30 homes have been foreclosed in 2007. About 7 years ago, only two homes were foreclosed. It can be seen that the upper middle class families are also not left out from the problem of foreclosures besides the working class. The real estate is heavily suffering for that.

Dan Murrer of RealSTATs has prepared a report on the foreclosure filing in about 32 well-off neighborhoods and towns. He has said, “It’s hitting people of all professions and backgrounds,” According to his findings, there has been a 210 percent increase in foreclosures. From 180 foreclosures in 2000, it has increased to 558 in 2007. This is indeed a huge increase. This reveals that this problem of real estate is increasing beyond sub-prime loans in low income places.

Mt. Lebanon has recorded a jump from 10 to 25 foreclosures while in Bethel Park, the number of foreclosures have increased from 12 to 38. In the year 2007, the number of foreclosures in Ross was 38. This is in fact a big increase from what it was in 2000. The number of foreclosures then was only 5. The other areas that are facing the brunt of foreclosures are Plum Boro in the east and Moon Township in the west. There has been an increase in foreclosures from 12 to 35 in Plum Boro and 8 to 27 in Moon Township.

Murrer has said, “The fact that foreclosures are increasing in these middle-class neighborhoods is indicating that the ‘average Joe’ with a standard mortgage is the one who’s getting foreclosed on,” According to Ray Dietz of Allstate Financial, it is the greed of both the buyers and lenders that have led to the increasing rate of foreclosures today. In a bid to buy a larger home the buyers did not submit the proof of income to get the mortgage and at the same time the lender did not ask for it. However, others who once were able to afford their mortgage are also facing the danger of losing their home due to high living cost or due to loss of their job.

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Whoever wins the president election in November; the number of foreclosure homes in the country will keep ascending. It is unlikely the new president would be able to control the situation as the value of real estate properties including homes are slumping with an increase in mortgage day by day. These debtors even owe more to the lenders than the actual current value of their homes.

It seems an uphill task for any of the would-be presidents, whether it is Democrat Barack Obama or Republican John McCain, to change or improve the situation at least within two years. Many factors are responsible for the rising foreclosures in the real estate market.

Leaving a foreclosed house means addition of one more to the list of vacant homes in the market. More vacant houses thus slash down the home values in the neighborhood, and that paves the way for increasing the number of foreclosures even more. As Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury Secretary says, the number is expected to be over 2 million homes by the end of the next two years. According to most of the experts, the number may reduce with the hiking in the rate of real estate properties during 2010’s spring selling session.

Another deciding factor is the Federal Reserve Action over which the president has no control. In order to stop inflation further, the Fed is expected to boost the rate of interest. In that instance, homeowners have to pay more to repay their debts, and so more foreclosures are likely in the market. These factors are not alarming for just the borrowers but for almost 57% Americans as recorded by AP-Yahoo News poll.

Both, Mr. Obama and Mr. McClain, are trying their best to help the borrowers facing foreclosure. However both are optimistic about the Federal Housing Administration that’s going to provide cheaper mortgage rates for the unfortunate homeowners.

According to Obama, these people won’t have to show good credit, but should prove the capability to afford new payments. This would help almost 400,000 distressed. This is a plan of around $1billion, and will be managed from an affordable housing fund financed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

McCain’s plan has a twist, and that needs people to show that they were capable of repaying at the time they got the original loan. His plan is estimated to be of $3Billion to $10 billion, and is expected to be managed by cutting the Government’s cost. Real estate owners are hopeful, however doubtful, that the situation will calm down.

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Foreclosure Prevention Pro Bono Project is on its way to help the homeowners to release their real estate properties from the grip of lenders. It’s a project, rather a resolution, taken by Maryland nonprofit groups. The pioneer of this project, Mr. Robert M. Bell, the chief judge of Maryland’s Court of Appeals, has taken the initiative personally to resist the lofty show of the real estate lenders. He has appealed to over 33,000 licensed attorneys of Maryland to stand beside these people in crisis of foreclosure. He requested the lawyers to participate in the project by donating money or lending their time.

This is the most alarming as well as controversial issue of the present time in the country. The condition is even worse in Ohio, where the Government is trying to sort this problem out. New laws have been introduced for giving the real estate owners several notices and allowing more time to react as reported by Mr. Bell earlier. Every year, the number of unsolved foreclosure cases is rising. However, the lawyers have started showing their interest and some of them already registered themselves for the training. Apart from them and many more, Baltimore’s nonprofit Maryland State Bar Association and Governor Martin O’Malley are active partners of the project.

In Maryland, over 70,000 homeowners, at least 70% more than that of last year, are the victims of foreclosure. It is time to save them from such unwanted harassment. This is a fact that most of them are not in a position to repay their debt, and rescue their mortgaged real estate property or home right now. They are already deeply engrossed with financial or personal problems of their own. Very few of them have the capacity to hire an advocate.

In this situation, the lawyers coming forward is really hopeful to the homeowners. Maryland housing counselors will also get some relief, as generally the borrowers come to them first to solve their real estate or foreclosure related problems. It seems that financially weak attorneys of small law firms have to compensate and give time, as most of the large firms serve for many of those mortgage-issuing financers.

However, it is true that all of those homeowners will not get their home back but this legal aid would help them to have time for transition and strength for living better and that is the main motto of the project.

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Many Americans have been lucky enough to be able to make a down payment along with having a willing and pliable lender. However, this has never been the complete picture. There are more lenders who have grown flexible seeing a possibility of future price drops, but along with that the huge increase in the number of foreclosures, it has become a regular feature to see many useless and unsold homes lying around in large numbers.

The overall economic strength of the nation has dwindled and foreclosures keep rising in an endless vicious cycle. The continued financial crisis amounting to massive losses in home equity has made many Americans seek a means of narrowing down their strength in buying a new house. Big budget purchases made earlier have come to be next to impossible to sell or too complicated a process for most of the country.

A recent Gallup poll even pointed out to the fact that a large number of Americans are now worse off than they had been a year ago, in regards to financial standards. This has been the first, full-blown major record of the biggest financial downslide seen in the last 32 years. As the economy begins to falter, more and more of the population keeps on losing the ground beneath their feet or a shade above their head every day.

To make matters worse, the Bush administration has not seen this threat to be one of the direct results of ill lending and real estate price inflation. They have been basing their explanation more on conventional means such as poor strength of employment, wage increase and rapid yet unstable growth in the gross economic wealth of every household. Many Americans have now been said to have spent the previous year accumulating increasing debt instead of rebuilding their loss of economic power. They have not even worked on to accelerate their earning potential. The current administration’s ill prepared coping mechanism has also been instrumental in getting the nation to the situation it now faces. Rising gas prices and a weakening economy are matters that go hand in hand, and so the former is the very sure sign of inevitable inflation.

The tax refunds this year ending and the added stimulus as served through the propaganda have been a temporary sudden boost towards developing lost economic power. This is likely to fall short by a great length in the face of the high amount of economic callousness that has been going down the last few years.

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There has been a 48 percent increase in the month of May, 2008 in the US Foreclosure filings. A minimum of one foreclosure filing has been received by about 261,255 households throughout the nation in May. This is a great crisis situation that has provided a major setback to the real estate sector of US. A total of 10 states have been affected by the foreclosures. Among them, Michigan, Arizona, California, Nevada and Florida foreclosures are the highest rate of foreclosed homes.

The situation in Florida and California metropolitan areas is all the more worse. These include Cape Coral-Fort Myers in Florida, Calif and Stockton in California. A foreclosure filing has been received by one in every 118 homes in the month of May in Nevada. It is almost four times the US rate. Coming to California, a foreclosure filing has been received by one in every 183 homes. Some of the reasons that have been instrumental in avoiding the house foreclosures by the homeowners are as follows:

• A hammered criteria of mortgage lending
• Rising mortgage rates
• A fall in the value of home
• A weak housing sale strategy
• A decelerating economy of US

This has further aggravated the real estate scenario of US. According to a company based in Calif., California, the lenders in the month of May approximately took back 74,000 properties across the nation. Moreover, about 58,000 have been sent default notices. Though the government as well as the mortgage industry has taken initiatives to tackle the problem of foreclosures, but there is still a long way to go to manage it.

Rick Sharga, the vice president of marketing of RealtyTrac, a company that keeps monitoring the default notices, feels that about an approximate of 50-60 percent borrowers who gets default notice will likely have to part with their homes. The increase in foreclosures will bring down the prices of the properties, which is detrimental to the growth of real estate sector. This phenomenon has been markedly noticed in Arizona, California, Nevada, and Florida where the price during the heydays were sky-high and has fallen like anything presently.

The sale of foreclosure and distressed properties is highly visible in some parts of the nation. Even in some neighborhoods, a major cutting down on prices is being done by the lenders in order to free them from a tremendous figure of foreclosed properties providing a positive push to the real estate.

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