There is no silver lining: Home foreclosures on the rise again


Last October 31, the Administration placed a moratorium on new foreclosures. In February 2009, the Obama administration announced a new housing rescue plan that gives incentives to mortgage companies and investors to reduce payments to affordable levels for qualifying homeowners.

The October 31 moratorium expired March 31. Since then, banks have gone back to their original foreclosure procedures. They have by now sifted through loan files, decided who they can help, and are foreclosing on the rest of the delinquent homeowners.

The numbers for this year are quite discouraging. American families threatened with foreclosure grew by 24% this year and this number is set to keep rising. Nationwide, nearly 804,000 homes received foreclosure notices from January to March, up from 650,000 a year ago. RealtyTrac, which publishes data on foreclosures, said that 340,000 properties were affected up 17% from February and 46% higher than a year ago.

One obvious effect of the increased foreclosure action will be a further decline in housing prices. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Ronald Temple, co-director at Lazard Asset Management, expects home prices to fall by 22% to 27% from their January levels. More than 2.1 million homes will be lost this year up from 1.7 million in 2008 according to Moody's Economy.com."

Do you believe that we will see another drop in home prices this year?

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA-89.2312,801.23
NASDAQ-23.352,903.88
S&P 500-9.311,342.64

Last updated: February 13, 2012: 06:02 AM

Hot Stocks

General Electric

18.875-0.255(-1.33)

Alcoa

10.29-0.35(-3.29)

Apple Inc

493.42+0.25(+0.05)

Google Inc 'A'

605.91-5.55(-0.91)

Bank of America

8.07-0.11(-1.34)

Wal-Mart Stores

61.90-0.06(-0.10)

Exxon Mobil Corp

83.80-1.08(-1.27)

Ford

12.44-0.25(-1.97)

Citigroup

32.925-0.735(-2.18)

IBM

192.42-0.71(-0.37)

Yahoo

16.14+0.14(+0.88)

Starbucks

48.82-0.38(-0.77)

Microsoft

30.495-0.275(-0.89)

Home Depot

45.33+0.06(+0.13)

DailyFinance Headlines

Benzinga Headlines

TheFlyOnTheWall.com Headlines

BioHealth Investor Headlines

WalletPop Headlines

DailyFinance BlackBerry App

My Portfolios

Track your stocks here!

Find out why more people track their portfolios on AOL Money & Finance then anywhere else.

BloggingStocks Partners

More from AOL Money & Finance

BioHealth Investor Headlines

Page Loaded in 1329130935423 ms.