Our Awful Situation

Archive for the ‘Foreclosure’ Category

Confidence Ebbs for Bank Sector and Stocks Fall

Posted by Charlie Kilo on July 15th, 2008

Even as the Bush administration moved to rescue the nation’s two largest mortgage finance companies, confidence in the banking sector spiraled downward Monday.

In Southern California, lines snaked around branches of IndyMac Bancorp, the large lender that was seized by federal regulators on Friday, as customers hurried to withdraw their money. As the anxiety spread through the financial markets, two other big banks, one in Ohio and another in Washington State, were compelled to assert that they were sound.

Even as federal regulators issued assurances that depositors’ savings were safe, Wall Street analysts circulated lists of lenders that might be vulnerable. Shares of regional banks plunged in one of the sharpest declines since the 1980s.

Communities suffer as foreclosure rate rises

Posted by Charlie Kilo on June 24th, 2008

This reminds me of Atlas Shrugged:

As mortgage defaults and foreclosures continue to rise, the impact is spreading well beyond those who are losing their homes.

In communities across the country, msnbc.com readers report that local governments are coping with shrinking tax rolls, lenders are saddled with more foreclosed homes than they can sell and empty homes in many neighborhoods are being vandalized.

Like everything associated with the nation’s housing crisis, the fallout from foreclosures is very local, a fact confirmed by hundreds of e-mails from readers in msnbc.com’s Gut Check America. Some regions appear to have escaped relatively unscathed. But in hard-hit states like California, Arizona and Florida, readers report that some neighborhoods are becoming virtual ghost towns.

73,000 homes lost to foreclosure in May

Posted by Charlie Kilo on June 13th, 2008

Filings for the month jumped by 48%. Nevada, California, and Florida continue to bear the brunt of the crisis:

The housing crisis grew worse in May, as more than 73,000 American families lost their homes to bank repossessions, up a staggering 158% from the 28,548 households that were dispossessed in May 2007.

Foreclosure filings of all kinds, including default notices, notices of sheriff’s sales and bank repossessions, were up 48% from May 2007, according to the latest release from RealtyTrac, the online marketer of foreclosed properties. Filings increased 7% from April.

“May was the 29th straight month we’ve seen a year-over-year increase,” RealtyTrac’s CEO James Saccacio said in a statement.

Million US homes in foreclosure

Posted by patriot on June 5th, 2008

Big bubble burst:

More than one million homes are now in foreclosure, the highest rate ever recorded, according to a trade group which warned Thursday that number will continue to climb.

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s first quarter report showed that a record 2.5% of all loans being serviced by its members are now in foreclosure, which works out to about 1.1 million homes. That’s up from the 2% of loans, or about 938,000 homes, that were in foreclosure at the end of 2007.

The report also showed that 448,000 homes, or about 1% of loans being serviced, began the foreclosure process during the first quarter. That’s up from about 382,000 homes, or 0.83%, that entered foreclosure in the last three months of 2007.

Mortgage Foreclosures Rise to New Heights

Posted by Charlie Kilo on June 5th, 2008

Even more “no duh” news from CNBC:

U.S. home foreclosures and the rate of homes entering the foreclosure process rose to record highs in the first quarter with increases across many loan classes, the Mortgage Bankers Association said on Thursday.

The rate of failing loans was led by a growing wave of subprime borrowers unable to make payments, the trade group said in its delinquency and foreclosure survey.

A record 0.99 percent of U.S. loans were entering the foreclosure process in the first three months of 2008 compared with 0.58 percent in the same time a year earlier.

The U.S. mortgage delinquency rate of 6.35 percent was the highest since 1979 when the trade group began its current method of measuring failing home loans.

Disappearing now: $6 trillion in housing wealth

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 30th, 2008

Hear that giant flushing sound? Its your “wealth” going down the toilet:

A Washington think tank is warning that housing prices are falling at an accelerating level, destroying wealth at a pace that will cost the average homeowner $85,000 in lost wealth this year alone.

The projections by the Center for Economic and Policy Research are based on the numbers in Tuesday’s Case-Shiller home price index, which showed accelerating price declines in most big cities.

Foreclosures and Food: Links to Various Stories

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 25th, 2008

There’s a lot going on in the news this morning so I thought I would compile several links here rather than create separate posts for each story:

As Food Prices Soar, Some Shortages Appear

Rising prices threaten millions with starvation, despite bumper crops

How will we feed the world?

California foreclosure “surge”: Up 327% from ‘07 levels

Pain of foreclosures spreads to the affluent

Moving back with mom and dad…at 52

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 16th, 2008

Learn to tell them “no” at a very young age:

After being laid off from her job as an events planner at an upscale resort, Jo Ann Bauer struggled financially. She worked at several lower-paying jobs, relocated to a new city and even declared bankruptcy.

Then in December, she finally accepted her parents’ invitation to move into their home — at age 52. “I’m back living in the bedroom that I grew up in,” she said.

Taking shelter with parents isn’t uncommon for young people in their 20s, especially when the job market is poor. But now the slumping economy and the credit crunch are forcing some children to do so later in life — even in middle age.

Financial planners report receiving many calls from parents seeking advice about taking in their grown children following divorces and layoffs.

Kim Foss Erickson, a financial planner in Roseville, Calif., north of Sacramento, said she has never seen older children, even those in their 50s, depending so much on their parents as in the last six months.

“This is not like, ‘OK, my son just graduated from college and needs to move back in’ type of thing,” she said. “These are 40- and 50-year-old children of my clients that they’re helping out.”

Parents “jeopardize their financial freedom by continuing to subsidize their children,” said Karin Maloney Stifler, a financial planner in Hudson, Ohio, and a board member of the Financial Planning Association. “We have a hard time saying no as a culture to our children, and they keep asking for more.”

Bush’s rescue plan would help some avoid foreclosure

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 2nd, 2008

This could be a bonanza for those left in the mortgage business - especially the FHA mortgage business:

The Bush administration is finalizing details of a plan to rescue thousands of homeowners at risk of foreclosure by helping them refinance into more affordable mortgages backed by public funds, government officials said.

The proposal is aimed at assisting borrowers who owe their banks more than their homes are worth due to plummeting home prices, an issue at the heart of the nation’s housing crisis. Under the plan, the Federal Housing Administration would encourage lenders to forgive a portion of those loans and issue new, smaller mortgages in exchange for the financial backing of the federal government.

The price of luxury

Posted by patriot on March 28th, 2008

CNN posted this sob story all over their front page yesterday:

When she was laid off in February, Patricia Guerrero was making $70,000 a year. Weeks later, with bills piling up and in need of food for her family, this middle-class mother did something she never thought she would do: She went to a food bank.

It was Good Friday, and a woman helping her offered to pay her utility bill.

“It brought tears to my eyes, and I sat there and I cried. I was like, ‘This is really where I’m at?’ ” she told CNN. “I go ‘no way;’ [but] this is true. This is reality. This is the stuff you see on TV. It was hard. It was very hard.”

Reading a little further yields this nugget of information:

She has had to take extreme measures to pay for her interest-only mortgage of $2,500 a month.

What in the world is a single mother of two doing in a $2,500/month interest-only mortgage? This is the price of luxury. And CNN thinks we should feel sorry for these people? They’re suffering the consequences of their own choices. Nobody forced her to take such a horrible loan.

You reap what you sow.

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