Crash Survival Zone

Mortgage defaults won’t slow until employment improves: MBA economist

A record percentage of U.S. mortgages entered foreclosure in the first quarter, and the jump in foreclosure starts compared with the fourth quarter was the biggest leap ever recorded in the Mortgage Bankers Association’s survey, released on Thursday.

According to the MBA’s quarterly National Delinquency Survey, 1.37% of [...]

Only 30 percent of foreclosed homes are currently on the market nationwide. Could the backlog of hundreds of thousands of empty or rented homes swamp recovery?

Brian Mehigan, the self-described “Mayor of Tara Lane,” knows all too well the rise and fall in real estate prices that he calls, simply, “the madness.”

One of a handful of [...]

As job losses rise, growing numbers of American homeowners with once solid credit are falling behind on their mortgages, amplifying a wave of foreclosures.

In the latest phase of the nation’s real estate disaster, the locus of trouble has shifted from subprime loans — those extended to home buyers with troubled credit — to the far [...]

by Mike Whitney
Due to the lifting of the foreclosure moratorium at the end of March, the downward slide in housing is gaining speed. The moratorium was initiated in January to give Obama’s anti-foreclosure program — which is a combination of mortgage modifications and refinancing — a chance to succeed. The goal of the plan was [...]

Lenders End Moratoria, Opening Flood of Foreclosures; Re-Defaults and Job Losses Also Take Their Toll

Completed foreclosures hit another monthly record in March as 175,199 homes were lost to foreclosure, up 44 percent from February’s record high, according to the latest U.S. Foreclosure Index released today by ForeclosureS.com, a leading real estate information provider.

The number of [...]

Policies aimed at easing home-loan terms for troubled borrowers may not be as effective in preventing foreclosures as more-direct aid to homeowners, Federal Reserve economists found.

Job losses and falling home prices have a bigger impact on delinquencies than mortgage terms, and modifications aren’t necessarily a better deal for investors than foreclosures, according to a paper [...]

More U.S. consumers are falling behind on their mortgages, an indication that the housing market has yet to hit bottom, a top credit bureau executive told Reuters.

Dann Adams, president of U.S. Information Systems for Equifax Inc, reported that 7 percent of homeowners with mortgages were at least 30 days late on their loans in February, [...]

City officials and housing advocates here and in cities as varied as Buffalo, Kansas City, Mo., and Jacksonville, Fla., say they are seeing an unsettling development: Banks are quietly declining to take possession of properties at the end of the foreclosure process, most often because the cost of the ordeal — from legal fees to [...]

The existing home sales data which was released to the market earlier was a “half empty, half full” set of data. The market seemed to take it as just full and left the empty part behind.

Home resale rates rose 5.1% in February to an annual rate of 4.72 million, according to the National Association of [...]

More consumers are just a paycheck or two away from ruin

Americans are in a collective state of financial depression as many admit they could only cover their bills for two months at most if they found themselves suddenly jobless, a nightmare more and more worry may come true.

The results of a bevy of surveys found [...]