Archive for 'Foreclosures'

Are you finding it hard to look for mortgage loans during these times of foreclosures? Have the loan requirements become too stiff for you?

Mortgage banks have been burned by the avalanche of foreclosures that hit them. Having learned their lessons, they are now tightening their screening processes.

Even so, there are other entities that you can approach for mortgage loans. Oftentimes, they offer better terms. You just have to show them that you have the capacity to pay your loan and your targeted property must pass their requirements. They want to make sure that your current and future financial condition insulates you from future foreclosures.

Here are several recommended mortgage lenders:

The first is the Federal Housing Administration. For decades, FHA has been offering home loans to families with lower income and who are not qualified for conventional loans. Recently, FHA has introduced higher loan amounts up to $625,000. With this new loan limit, FHA loans have been projected by the National Association of Realtors to increase and to account for about one-fourth of all mortgages signed this year.

The new FHA loan model has become more attractive. It requires low down payments, considers the 600 score, removes prepayment fees, pays for closing costs and accepts mortgage insurance fees in place of the 20-percent down payment requirement.

Another recommended mortgage lenders are credit unions. Credit unions have avoided the mistakes that for-profit lenders have committed largely because they had no motivation to enter the subprime market and highly risky investment schemes that caused the flood of foreclosures. Like other lenders, they offer 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, adjustable rate mortgages and hybrids, but make them available at lower rates than the banks. Foreclosures of mortgages originated by credit unions have been relatively negligible.

According to the National Credit Union Administration, mortgage loans provided by credit unions increased by 10.1 percent in the first six months of 2008, a direct contrast to loans from mortgage banks, which decreased by 17 percent.

The third recommended lenders are the Rural Development Housing and Community Facilities Programs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. If you live in a rural area where there are less than 20,000 residents and your income is below 115 percent of the median income in your area, you might qualify for a rural housing loan.

Lastly, the fourth recommended lenders are local and state housing agencies. Many local governments are offering housing loans to first-time homebuyers, low-income families and employees in government service such as police officers, fire fighters and teachers. Many state agencies even have programs for homeowners distressed by foreclosures. You can contact them through the units of the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment.

Related Information:

• Foreclosures by State
• Tax Foreclosure Properties
• Fannie Mae Foreclosures
• Freddie Mac Foreclosures

If you are planning to apply for loan modification or restructuring under the Obama administration’s program, be warned about persons or companies offering their services, promising to make the application process easier for you. As the number of lender and tax foreclosure properties increase across the country, the number of creative scammers and swindlers also increase.

These defrauders know that homeowners, especially families with young children, are very vulnerable to deceitful offers of help when they are behind on their payments and are facing the real possibility of being evicted. Some defrauders might even go as far as telling you that tax foreclosure properties are included in the program.

According to Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, complaints from distressed homeowners victimized by defrauders, account for the highest percentage of the total complaints received by his office. It is possible that fraudulent loans offered to former owners of tax foreclosure properties are among these complaints. McCollum is advising troubled homeowners to contact their mortgage lenders or servicers before considering a third party for help.

In light of the expected swarming of mortgage lenders with applicants for loan modifications, you should expect to be ignored or redirected to other departments at the first call. You should be persistent so you would not have to turn to third party modification assistance. If you really need a third party because of some reasons, then contact nonprofits and community organizations that offer free assistance. This is also true for individuals with losses involving tax foreclosure properties. There are nonprofits that offer free counseling and free legal assistance for tax foreclosure properties.

There are signs that you can recognize if a person or a company offering foreclosure prevention help is a scammer. A company giving guarantees that your mortgage loan will be saved from becoming lender foreclosure or tax foreclosure properties is out to swindle you. With the restrictions of the Obama program and the opposition of the mortgage industry to some of the features of the program, no entity can guarantee a loan modification approval.

Another one is a business that uses logos, names and taglines associated with federal and state housing programs and agencies. This is a technique that aims to lead you to think that the business is certified or affiliated with a certain law firm or government agency.

Search Foreclosures by Top States:

• Florida Foreclosures
• California Foreclosures
• Texas Foreclosures

David Moffett will resign as chief executive officer of Freddie Mac on or before March 13. Moffett, who replaced Richard Syron in September 2008, said he planned to go back to the financial sector. He was U.S. Bancorp’s chief financial officer from 1993 to 2007.

Moffett was appointed CEO of Freddie Mac when the federal government took control of the mortgage firm to save it from collapse in September. The flood of foreclosures overwhelmed the mortgage company, necessitating its rescue by the government to prevent the collapse of the mortgage market and protect millions of homeowners threatened by foreclosures. Freddie Mac, together with Fannie Mae, was put under conservatorship by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Fannie Mae’s chief executive Daniel Mudd was also replaced by Herb Allison, the previous CEO of TIAA-CREF.

Freddie Mac chairman John Koskinen told reporters Moffett made significant contributions during Freddie’s crucial transition period. Moffett also worked with the FHFA to help control the onslaught of foreclosures and bring back stability to the mortgage and housing sectors.

Last year, Freddie Mac posted losses totaling $25 billion in the third quarter equivalent to $19.44 per share while Fannie Mae posted about the same loss, $25.2 billion, equivalent to $10.27 per share. Freddie Mac has already received almost $14 billion in federal assistance since its takeover and may still require billions of capital infusion for its continued operation. As foreclosures continue to rise in many areas despite mitigation efforts, Freddie Mac may still need about $35 billion to continue to carry out its mandate as part of Obama’s $75 program to avert foreclosures.

Under President Obama’s Homeowner Stability Initiative, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae will offer refinancing with low mortgage rates to homeowners who have little or zero equity in their homes. They will help maintain affordable mortgage rates and help stabilize the mortgage market. These two mortgage firms will also continue to be supported with funding by the Treasury Department. The Treasury will increase its preferred stock purchase agreements with the mortgage firms from $100 billion each to $200 billion each. It will also continue to buy Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s mortgage-backed securities to help promote liquidity in the housing market battered by foreclosures.

Search Foreclosure Homes in USA Top Cities:

• Houston Foreclosure Homes
• Orlando Foreclosure Homes
• Dallas Foreclosure Homes
• Tampa Foreclosure Homes

In South Florida, squatting in foreclosed homes is becoming a trend for the homeless. The homeless were left with a choice between street-dwelling and squatting. Who would not rather live under a roof, even if it is not yours?

Those who lost their jobs and homes are now secretly residing in vacant repossessed properties. Here, they try to collect themselves, be productive and get back into their feet, something tough to do if you live on the streets.

An actual organization, Take Back the Land, find these foreclosed homes and designate homeless individuals or even families so they can make use of the vacant yet cozy homes.

In Miami-Dade alone, around 4,800 are homeless. And there are a lot of vacancies to choose from thanks to the 6,000 foreclosure cases in December alone. With these proportions, the problem of vagrancy would be resolved.

Many of these foreclosed homes are unlocked and easily accessible. Just pay the electric and water bills and you are ready to go.

But is this not trespassing? Illegal?

Trespassing and squatting is actually a misdemeanor under Florida law. But Take Back the Land representatives believe that if you choose who inhabits these repossessed homes, it would be safer for the community. If homeless are clean, respectful of the home and the neighborhood, and even educated, why not give them their chance to temporarily and discreetly reside in a used-to-be useless property.

Neighbors even think that homeless-inhabited foreclosures are safer than letting an empty house attract vandals and thieves. The foreclosure-inhabitants can keep the home clean and not leave an eyesore.

Vacant foreclosures have not served any purpose but a threat in the safety and property value of a neighborhood. So why not let an empty home serve a little purpose for the homeless.

Search Foreclosure Homes:

• Texas Foreclosure Homes
• North Carolina Foreclosure Homes
• California Foreclosure Homes
• Florida Foreclosure Homes

A website foreclosure-tracking service reports that the country reached almost 1 million foreclosures in 2008. The figures show a big increase to 63.5 percent.

There were also 2.1 million foreclosure-related filings the previous year. The statistics include default notices and auctions, and reflect a staggering 62 percent jump from 2007. Nevada, with 49.9 filings for every 1,000 households, topped the list.

The housing crisis has plunged home values down to record-low prices as the selling of homes becomes harder. Some landlords have also dropped rental prices to attract more tenants. Aside from this, construction of new property has slowed and because of the tight credit market, there has been marked difficulty to secure financing for home purchases.

However, President of a foreclosure-listing service Alexis McGee she sees all these as positive indicators which would give a chance for the housing industry to rise. According to McGee, the decline in house prices spells more housing affordability to the growing American population. She also cites that the housing shortage due to the drop in new home construction would contribute to housing affordability. She says that recovery in the housing market has already started in some hard-hit areas such as California.

In the fourth quarter, completed foreclosures have dropped 9.2 percent from the previous quarter to 266,986. Filings also decreased 2.4 percent. Experts attribute the improvement to private and public efforts, including loan adjustments and eviction moratoriums.

In the past months, some lawmakers and analysts have attributed the continuing housing problems to non-aggressive programs initiated by the Treasury Department under the Bush administration. Last year, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s strategy of injecting capital into banks to keep them afloat was heavily questioned by House Democrats. It remains to be seen whether Obama’s foreclosure prevention program which has yet to be approved by Congress will finally be able to stem housing problems.

As President-Elect Obama prepares to take control of the country, he inherits one of the biggest economic and real-estate crisis’s this country has seen since the Great Depression. As home prices continue to plummet and foreclosure rates continue to rise one has to wonder who would want to be President at a time like this. Yet, hidden in the recent election data there is an interesting trend that so far has been widely ignored by most – is it possible that foreclosure rates helped decide who our next President was going to be? Would whoever carried the states with the highest foreclosure levels be our next President?

First of all, why are we so interested in this type of data?  Primarily because in this current economy the so-called purple states (the top 10 states with the highest foreclosure rate) represented an identifiable voting bloc of individuals.  During normal economic times foreclosures are spread across a highly diverse group of people that in itself may not represent much of a trend. However, during this economic downturn people who face foreclosure share common characteristics: many of them have (or had) a job, many of them had an adjustable rate mortgage, and many of them were managing to make their housing payments before other economic factors (such as rising energy prices and mortgage rate adjustments) took effect. 

If we look back to the 2000 and 2004 elections we can see that the top 10 foreclosure rate states (Nevada, Florida, California, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Indiana and Colorado) had 97 of their votes going for Bush, and 87 votes for Gore (2000) and Kerry (2004).  In 2008 we saw a dramatic shift in votes – 159 went for Obama and only 25 went for McCain.  Let’s put that into perspective here:   The so-called purple states that make up our list made up 203 out of the 270 total votes a candidate needed to receive to win the White House.

All these states shared not only the common characteristic of massive home foreclosures, but they also were facing much lower home values for those who remained in their homes, which meant lower property tax values, that led to cut backs in government services and finally reductions in government workers for the state.  Talk about a ripple effect!

The only big difference between the top 10 foreclosure rate states in 2008 versus 2000 and 2004 is that Texas was part of the lineup in 00 and 04, whereas New Jersey replaced Texas on the lineup in 2008. Remember, in 2008 the lineup consisted of Nevada, Florida, California, Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, New Jersey, Indiana and Colorado. Would we have seen Texas go for Obama in 2008 if it had remained on the list?  McCain led Obama 55% to 44%, meaning that a mere 6% shift would have put the state in Obama’s column. Texas is now ranked 24th for foreclosure in the nation, a massive improvement. However, had this improvement not taken place I believe that we would have seen Texas go for Obama – a massive shift.

We’re not the only ones who are looking at these numbers and analyzing the data.  Politicians are keenly aware of the shift and how much the purple states came into play. It’s not unthinkable that in the future we may be placing more emphasis on economic and real estate data to predict our next President than we are on traditional polling methods.

Learn about government foreclosures.

Around fifty percent of the foreclosure cases that were filed for modification during the first half of 2008 are now in non-payment status again. The modifications were supposed to help these borrowers keep their homes. But due to either the continued economic slump or the still unaffordable adjustments foreclosure still looms to them

The economy has been falling further reaching the end of 2008. One in every 10 mortgages is now either in foreclosure or delayed in payment. 500,000 lost their jobs last November making unemployment rate peak at 6.7 percent. Credit markets only showed some improvement thanks to the $700 billion bail out approved by the Congress.

The different government areas have diverse plans in trying to keep the foreclosure-troubled in their homes. Here are a few:

• Office of Thrift Supervision director John Reich thinks that government fund must be directed in building more work opportunities than using it to prevent foreclosures. He thinks that more paying-jobs for the currently unemployed will give room to pay for mortgages thereby preventing foreclosure.
• Some experts, like Federal Deposit Insurance Corp chairman Sheila Bair thinks that loan modifications are not modified enough to be affordable.
• The government wants to focus on the how big their action should be in trying to stop the increase of the already 2.25 million cases of foreclosure for 2008.
• New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine sees a bottom-up approach by modifying loans and helping homeowners keep their homes. He wants a 3-6 month freeze in foreclosures.
• President-elect Barack Obama intends to include aiding homeowners facing repossession with their mortgages in his great plan for the recovery.
• The Bush administration relied on voluntary efforts by the lenders to hopefully stop foreclosure which as we have seen was not that helpful.
• A lot of consumer advocates and lawmakers found that tanks started a government reaction. They hope to have the same effect as the Home Owners Loan Corp of the 1933 depression.

Credit Suisse’s predicts a whopping 8.1 million loans leading to foreclosure within the next four years, which is 16 percent of all mortgages. A report was released last April that there will be 6.5 million foreclosure cases or 13 percent of all mortgages but eventually made a new report after the pitfall of the economy.

It has been a tough year in many economic aspects, particularly the housing industry, and it looks like it would not be resolve anytime in the near future.

The poor economy, unstoppable home price drop and upsurge of loan defaults makes foreclosure a common thing in our low-esteemed situation. Sub-prime lenders are said to have mellowed, but ineffective federal actions to stop repossession marks the continued build up of foreclosed homes.

The government is trying to re-negotiate home mortgages to prevent foreclosure in bringing home prices lower. But this is difficult because investments are in complex credit vehicles and are marketed to investors in different parts of the world.

John Dugan, director of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, announced that early 2008 modifications had a high re-default rate. 36 percent of the borrowers were unable to re-pay 30 days after the renegotiated date. Then in just 6 months, the rate increased to 56 percent and 58 percent in 8 months.

Not all of these re-defaults end up in foreclosure, but repossession cases are really rampant. Dugan thought that re-defaults were very high because loan modifications were not well negotiated and were still high.

Office of Thrift Supervision director John Reich believes that modifying mortgages is ineffective, so increasing job opportunities would be a better strategy.

Credit Suisse then believed that if home prices continue to drop, lower than mortgage value, then homeowners will end-up with no choice but to give-up their houses.

U.S. is now at risk in becoming a second-class society. Unbearable recession, downfall of the housing industry and unavoidable foreclosures and its effect in credit score may lead the nation to impending doom.

In RealtyTrac’s report Thursday, the count of American homeowners drawn into the housing dilemma dropped to a significant level last month. It was reported to be the lowest since June as new legislation prolonged the course of foreclosures.

RealtyTrac’s marketing vice president, Rick Sharga, stated that there will be a notable cut in January.
As job cuts continues to increase, foreclosure activity will likely tag along behind.

Foreclosure homes were down seven percent from October, but 28 percent higher the same month last year. Throughout the whole nation, more than 259,000 homes got no less than one notice linked to foreclosure in November, added RealtyTrac.

The report was released at the time that the Democrats and President-elect Barack Obama urge the government to use some portion of the bailout fund to stop the escalating crisis in the housing market.

In a report coming from Mortgage Bankers Association last week, one in ten American homeowners has a mortgage with a least a month late on their dues or going in foreclosureRepo homes were reported to reach more than 78,000 last month, said RealtyTrac, who monitors such activity.

The worst recession ever to hit the U.S. in decades, millions of American household was embroiled with the falling property value and tighter lending norm. In a prediction made by the Federal Reserve, the number of foreclosures will arrive at about 2.25 million this year, greater than double pre-meltdown level.

The report of RealtyTrac shows Nevada, Florida and Arizona topped the country’s high foreclosure rate. One in every seventy six homes in Nevada got a file related to foreclosure last month. Florida had one in every 173 properties with foreclosure filing, and one in every 198 homes in Arizona. Finishing out the top 10 were California, Michigan, Georgia, Ohio, Colorado, Utah and Idaho.

In the group of metropolitan areas, the Cape Coral-Fort Myers district in Florida was on top with one in every 59 homes having a file for foreclosure homes. Behind it were Las Vegas, and the cities of Merced, Modesto and Stockton in California.

Largely as a result of the continued decline of the housing market and flood of foreclosures, the nationwide unemployment rate has increased from 6.5 percent in October to 6.7 percent in November, the highest rate in 15 years. According to the Labor Department, employers in the private sector eliminated 533,000 jobs during the month of November, the highest number in 34 years. Most of the job losses were in the manufacturing, construction, financial, retail, leisure and hospitality industries.

Despite the decrease in mortgage rates and home prices, homebuyers and real estate investors are still hesitant in looking at opportunities in the housing market. According to analyst Nancy Vanden Houten of Stone & McCarthy Research Associates in New Jersey, mortgage rate reduction is not enough to revitalize the housing market.

She said that a focused effort must be done to tackle the foreclosure problem so that the housing market could reach its bottom and then starts to climb up. She said that bankruptcy courts and mortgage services must be allowed by new legislation to modify the mortgage terms for foreclosed properties or homes at risk of foreclosure.

Home loan refinancing schemes have not been implemented by mortgage lenders and have not been applied for by troubled homeowners because of the drastic fall in the value of their homes. Home values have declined to a level lower than their mortgage values, forcing homeowners to choose foreclosure over refinancing.

Nonetheless, according to Brad Sherman of Nationwide Mortgage Services in Maryland, there are people, such as renting families with good credit ratings, who can take advantage of low home prices, low mortgage rates and high number of repo homes in the market. He cited a couple whose home loan interest was reduced by 1.25 percent from the rate written in the sales document that they signed, cutting their monthly amortizations to a very affordable level.