It has been two years since the property bubble burst but foreclosures continue to be on the rise. Analysts expect the real estate market to rebound eventually but the end of the road still seems far away.

While foreclosures are affecting the economy everywhere, some states have had it particularly bad. States like California, Florida and Illinois together with Michigan, Nevada and Ohio have all been badly affected.

Says Marietta Rodriguez of Neighborworks America, “We anticipate that by this time next year, whole neighborhoods and whole communities will be greatly impacted by vacant property issues.” Created by Congress in the 1970s, Neighborworks America helps increase home ownership.

Research agency, RealtyTrac claims that foreclosures have increased 65 percent since last year. It puts the number of foreclosures in April 2008 as a record 243,353.

According to the Federal Reserve, 2007 saw about 1.5 million foreclosures being initiated. This is 53 percent more than the previous year’s figures.

Several weeks earlier, Randall Kroszner, Federal Governor emphasized that this high rate of foreclosures is viewed by the Federal Reserve as “an urgent problem”. He felt that banks could help improve the situation by working out arrangements with the defaulters that would help avoid foreclosure. Only in extreme cases should they contemplate repossessing the property.

Neighborworks America too has undertaken steps to help distraught homeowners. With the help of the central bank it is identifying communities which have been hit the worst. Neighborworks has a network of over 230 community based groups and this helps greatly in this task. The services of trained mortgage counsellors are then deployed in these areas.

Neighborworks has also initiated a special foreclosure program last year to help keep home repossessions at a minimum.

Individual cities too have started taking action to minimise losses in their area. Baltimore and Cleveland have accused several banks and lenders of promoting high interest loans to buyers who are not aware of the pitfalls these may present. They have started legal proceedings against more than a dozen of these banks and lenders.

The city of Boston on the other hand is buying up vacant homes to prevent them from deteriorating.

Rodriguez warns that the situation is “further complicated because it’s not just one holder of the mortgage.” She explains the loans can often be complicated because the bank has traded mortgage portfolios internationally and the buyer’s portfolio may have been sold to a foreign bank.

Rodriguez, however, has hope for the future as she feels that in recent times, banks have become less rigid and are willing to modify loans.

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The Warren Group, a Boston real estate tracker, has recently come up with figures that point to an alarming situation in some Bay state cities. Figures cited by the group show that foreclosure sales are now posing a challenge to home sales in these areas. The housing crisis is particularly acute in hard hit areas where the number of foreclosures is almost the same as the number of home sales.

According to the Warren Group the number of homes that were foreclosed in Lawrence in the first four months of the year was 156. This is in contrast to the 184 homes that were sold on the market. These figures suggest that bank seizures account for 46 percent of all real estate sales in the city. Not only is the state wise average almost half of this but the situation was vastly different even a few years ago.

Dorchester experienced 244 foreclosures and 340 home sales in the same period while figures for Brockton reflected 233 foreclosures and 307 home sales. In terms of percentages, foreclosures thus accounted for 41 percent of real estate sales in Dorchester and 43 percent in Brockton.

A break down of the figures shows that in certain cases foreclosures actually outnumber home sales in Brockton. This was reflected in the data for single family homes as well as two and three family homes in certain localities.

The result of this rising number of foreclosures is that real estate prices are dropping further in these areas which are already experiencing a depressed market. According to the Warren Group, there has been a decline of 17 percent in the median price in Dorchester. Lawrence has experienced a drop of 31 percent in the same period while Brockton has shown a drop of 19.7 percent. Trade analysts and experts are finding this trend alarming.

Thomas Callahan of the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance is of the opinion that the current situation is disturbing because it is depressing the real estate market. Joseph Kriesberg, who heads the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corps warns that the real estate market has not hit rock bottom yet and the numbers are likely to get worse.

Some experts attribute the present situation to the increase in high interest loans by subprime lenders during the recent real estate boom. Over the last two years many of these loans have defaulted and contributed to the turmoil in the global financial markets. This trend has been seen not only in Massachusetts but all over the country as well.

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A private financial conference held in London last week saw bankers from the USA airing their views on the present housing and mortgage situation. Some of the top executives of American banks presented their forecasts and offered the audience a perspective into the inside world of real estate forecasts. On the whole the bankers were optimistic about the situation.

The hardest hit state so far has been California, which has seen a spew of foreclosures and dropping prices of real estate. According to Kerry Killinger, CEO, Washington Mutual the last month has seen a slight improvement in the state. His company is closely monitoring the situation as this may be an indication that the downslide in real estate is finally evening out.

Chief financial officer, Wells Fargo, Howard Atkins believes that lower rates of mortgage coupled with affordable housing and capital infused banks can together help the market recover within the year. Quoted in the American Banker newspaper, Atkins’ views promise a brighter future for the hard hit real estate market.

The latest federal pricing data however does not reflect this upbeat mood. The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight is the agency responsible for tracking home values on behalf of the federal government. Issued last week, its quarterly report cites a 4.4 percent decline between January and March 2008 in California. This makes the predictions of improved conditions by the bankers all the more significant in the second quarter.

California’s declining real estate prices are not reflected throughout the country, however. Of the 292 metropolitan areas surveyed by the report, 56 percent have actually shown an appreciation in real estate values in the last year. Topping the list is Houma-Bayou, Louisiana with a 11.2 percent gain, closely followed by Grand Junction, Colorado at 9.1 percent. Wenatchee, Washington (up by 8.1 percent), Austin, Texas (up by 7.7 percent) and Billings, Montana (up by 7.1 percent) also find places at the top of the list. State wise, real estate in Wyoming appreciated by 6.3 percent, in Utah by 5.6 percent, in Montana by 4.9 percent and in Texas by 4.7 percent.

These figures once again highlight the fact that real estate is a highly localized asset. Fluctuations in value in different states do not necessarily affect prices everywhere. Thus on the one hand there are states like California and Florida which experienced highs of 25 percent increases at one time and have hit rock bottom more recently. On the other hand, there are those states that have plodded along on a steady keel, experiencing neither extreme.

“Slow and steady” seems to be the mantra of the future.

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The US House had recently passed a bill containing the message that the government would offer an insurance of over $300 billion in the form of new mortgage loans, so that there could be easy refinancing of loans on an estimated half a billion borrowings that were about to face foreclosures. Particularly those were in concern who owed more on their mortgages than their houses were actually worth at current prices.

House lawmakers had also passed a bill that would be sending $15 billion to the states to buy and fix foreclosed properties. This really looks like a positive streak in the real estate scenario.

The new homeowner help package has kept the problems of a facing foreclosure scenario in mind. The Senate has clearly stated that there remains a potentiality of a hurdle in the White House with the threatening of a veto plan and argument over its risk factor could even lead to a bail-out of a lender. Therefore, a legislative council is being set up in order to reach a sort of half-way compromise solution that will suit both parties. There are adjustable rate mortgages scheduled to test the higher rates of mortgage later this month as well as the next.

More than a million foreclosures have been forecast to take place in the current year, all across US. Rick Sharga, the vice-president of RealtyTrac, doesn’t think that the volume is likely to shrink to something less in a hurry.

Around 54,500 properties got repossessed by lenders on a national level in April itself. About 2% of overall US households faced foreclosure last month. As these foreclosed estates keep rising in number, they begin to add inventory homes in the real estate market as well. One can see that home prices are coming down at an alarming level. The larger impact has been seen in regions where foreclosures were most concentrated in the past few months. States like Southern California, South Florida and parts of Arizona have come under the list of the most concentrated areas.

The state of Nevada is said to have posted the worst number of foreclosure rates in the entire nation. There has been at least one major foreclosure-related issue rising up in one out of every 146 households. This rise has thus been nearly four times the average national figures. The number of property filings had jumped up by an alarming rate of 95% in values in April last year, though this has declined a bit by around 5% in March.

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A steady and growing reluctance to get into the housing market has become part of the reason why worrying over housing prices become futile. Housing prices are going to fall anyways, and thus it becomes a good stance for buyers to consider selling out now.

The tremendously high number of falling property prices has resulted in the growth of one fall-out in every four properties and four out of ten have seen a fall in their price. This is a decrease in the rate, considering the situation about a couple of years back.

The expectations from rising properties in the South have been the greatest with the Westerners predicting that they are likely to drop. So, the buying period may be looking good but all is not as rosy for anybody trying to sell as Robert Jackson, a resident of Ferguson admits. Jackson lives in a two-bedroom flat with his wife and four young children. He assesses that he would love to purchase a larger and more affordable home, but there is a void in the number of buyers for his existing property. In selling it, he would also likely lose thousands of dollars as the situation is not all that good for the real estate market in his neighborhood, with a high rate of foreclosed properties all around his house. In fact, the huge number of foreclosures, having soared record-breaking levels, has resulted in the downfall of the entire housing economy. Properties bought two years back, like that of Ferguson, just don’t have that economic value anymore. Until the market looks promising for an improvement, there comes to be no real reason to make a property deal just yet.

Local housing prices have in fact gone down by 35% with the disputable public sentiments regarding this problem. It is quite understandable why the housing market looks so grim. Half the homes remain overpriced, especially in the north eastern region. Only one out of the ten houses has doubled in their pricing, while Midwesterners are likely to feel this rise than in any other neighborhood.

Some of the areas in the county have defied the age old trends with regards to property deals. Laurie Jensen, a single mother of three kids, is actually struggling to make her payments in time. Her home is in Whitehall, Mont., and she has come to work as a part-time flagger in the construction business and often remains unemployed. She wishes to move to the outskirts of the town to avoid an impending foreclosure but the areas she is considering, have bucked the trend, and the prices have gone up.

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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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The situation with foreclosures in Florida and Nevada has been quite the same as Colorado. These states have seen a lot of speculative and rash buying that has resulted on bets in housing values as well. This has helped the real estate business sink considerably.

In Ohio and Michigan, around 11,273 and 9,494 foreclosures got filed in March with economic conditions such as high employment coming into play. This had an effect in Georgia as well, due to extensive fraudulent activities along with greater housing construction.

It has been concluded that those involved in “foreclosure scam rings” have conspired to overvalue the price of properties by lamely appraising and driving through loans. However, Colorado continues to be among the top ten states that have hit the highest foreclosure statistics. Yet, the situation appears to be brighter for the Rocky Mountain state. The total number of foreclosures incurred in this March alone have totaled slightly lower than Colorado did last year. It is also a remarkable 8% lower than in February as compared to last year.

All the credit for lowering the figure goes to the governmental homeowners’ aid program. With their help, many positive changes have been looked forward to, and more changes are expected.

Still, the current situation in the real estate sector is that most Americans still refrain from buying properties out of mortgage. One out of every seven holders keeps worrying that they will slide in making their payments on time. Even more owners fret that their homes run the risk of higher payments in terms of interest while their actual property value would keep on shriveling. A recent poll even suggests that the huge amount of stress involved with property buying and selling has led to a nationwide housing crisis.

The sagging real estate market along with increasingly souring property prices crossroads with various finance related problems as part of the larger status of the nation. According to Associated Press-AOL Money and Finance, 60% of prospective buyers now refrain from making property purchases for the next two years. Rising up by 53% in an AP-POLL in September 2006, current statistics show that intense paranoia has spread among people. This number of dithering buyers was only 15% two years back. The present economic climate also shows that even holding on to existing property has been quite a gauntlet practice for many homeowners. Nearly three out of every ten owners anticipate that their home values will fall, while the interest on lease rates will continue to be on the rise. About 14% fear that they will be left behind in making timely payments on their mortgages if interest rates keep being reset.

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Sean Zawyer and Seth Gissen are two pioneers in foreclosure expertise who can give you a clearer sense of the mortgage meltdown effect in the US. These two process servers as well as officers of law are hired to give you raw and uncut news updates regarding the current foreclosure meltdown, and all the real estate mayhem. The company that has hired them delivers about 50,000 foreclosure notices just across Miami itself, and this event occurs every month giving you the picture of the scale of this unparalleled crisis affecting the real estate business today.

Zawyer has been reported to have said that there are no words to describe this major pitfall in the real estate market. Both of them have been in this market for over 10 years now, and they strongly agree to the fact that this has been the worst period in the past many years. As more and more foreclosure tags hang in front of every foreclosed Miami property, the duo comments that their business that was on rapid growth by 20 or 30% has now doubled in the last one and half years.

The company itself now boasts of a strength of 55 employees, with 25 in the office and the rest 30 as reporters on foreclosure notices. The duo here is not the only pair making it big out of the foreclosure industry. There are plenty of services available that are making their profit from the sheer necessity of another side of economic downfall. Many moving companies as well as banks have tried to clean up on foreclosure possibilities by helping move the owners who have markedly fallen behind in making their payments.

The Rockwall County in Texas has even had the sheriff calling in to evict around six whole families per week in order to continue mass eviction.

The other side of the foreclosure business reveals a somewhat booming industry in the outskirts of Los Angeles. This is in due process of preparing for the sale or auction of repossessed homes. Homes that have been shortlisted for reselling after being foreclosed have been a large turnover business here. About two years ago even the WSR Preservation Services had a Californian property going on for maintenance requisites as a part of its reselling program. This maintenance included cleaning up of foreclosed homes having around 10 employees to carry out the purpose. But now such a company on property cleaning would harbor no less than 60 employees for each project.

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The grim side of any foreclosed property would leave the marks of a sweet little family which just couldn’t meet the requisite mortgage payment. Many of the clean up people in such properties, readdressing them for a fresh sale, report rather touching accounts of the remnants of a happy family. They have reported to have found toys and bicycles being left in the yards, and clothes lines with clothes hanging on them in a few cases. The president of WSR Preservation Services, John Plocher, has been said to have reported that these are the usual scenes in many a clean-up projects in suburban Los Angeles. It showed that they have been clearly abandoned in a tearful hurry.

Some of these families have been locked up by the sheriff, and scared neighbors under threat have chosen to move out quick. Property owners are often hard to find after a house is under foreclosure. As more and more owners leave their home, the authorities find an empty home or a property occupied by renters. This way the owners are rarely traceable.

One would find a real estate expert on a channel like ABC News say that the end of the property business is here, and that the very pit of the bottom would be at least a year away. The publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, Guy Cecala, has stated that it would take till the middle of next year to really experience a major bottoming out. Before that, there is still chance to revive this market. In relative terms, foreclosures have really reached a record high. But to consider the current situation in this falling market, there still seems to be time to revive it. As the shifts move forward, more constructive work can be supposedly done to help the real estate market.

With the advent of spring, the number of foreclosures has increased a great deal. So, the start of the new season hasn’t gone all that easy and well for property owners in the U.S. The ready percentage of foreclosures has in fact shot up by 57% in the last month compared to the statistics a year ago. RealtyTrac has reported that foreclosure filings have taken a swell nationwide. The rate of foreclosures has in fact shot up all over many states in a dramatic manner. This rise has been particularly significant in Nevada where one out of every 139 households has got a foreclosure filing.

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According to preliminary totals, more than 400 homes have gone into foreclosure in the seventh successive month. The rate of home foreclosure is steadily on a rise but still it is better in comparison to the national and state rates. Foreclosure Listing Service has compiled preliminary statistics and they show that Collin County will have 400 foreclosure postings next month and this happens to be the seventh month in a row.

According to the report, for the foreclosure auction scheduled in May, the numbers of notices filed were 510, in the county. This shows an increase of 32 percent as the notices filed in May 2997 were 386. Year 2008 has witnessed 2,198 foreclosure postings till now. Bernard Weinstein, director, Centre for Economic Development and Research at the University of North Texas, commented that though the numbers were pretty large, they did not come across as any huge surprise. He says that first they were facing a recession. Secondly, people who had bought property recently might have reset their subprime mortgages or the neighborhoods they live in might have been reset and so they were squeezed and thus not able to pay their monthly dues.

Bonnie Brown from Foreclosure Listing Service said that there were more expenses than mortgages that the homeowners were concerned about. Apart from being an indication of a lagging economy, there were also divorce, unemployment as well as medical issues that added to the problem. So a number of factors lead to foreclosure and the principle dominating factor according to him is the increase in the cost and the standard of living. Food, gas and other utilities have become terribly expensive and their adverse effect is seen on foreclosure rates.

Brown feels that a family cannot stretch their household budgets any more as they have already been extended to the most. Weinstein also says that mortgage payments are not the first priority to most families. Most people who live on a tight budget think about buying their food and filling up their car with gas before mortgage payments. They skip paying their mortgage for some months and hope to make up for it somehow.

According to Weinstein, the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex real estate market is not as badly hit as the rest of the country. There has been a slight drop in median prices in the Metroplex of around 1 to 4 percent but in the other parts of the country it is as much as 12 to 13 percent. The economy here has been comparatively stable as there was no overbuilding in this area.

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