HallSlug.com

Archive for August, 2008

Foreclosures Increase 55% and Home Values Continue Fall

12.7% of U.S. Homeowners Will Be Forced Out of Their Homes!

Aug. 14 (Bloomberg) — Banks repossessed almost three times as many U.S. homes in July as a year earlier and the number of properties at risk of foreclosure jumped 55 percent as falling prices made it harder to sell or refinance.

“It’s getting worse,” Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s executive vice president for marketing, said in an interview. “The number of properties that have been foreclosed on by the banks and still haven’t sold is the highest we’ve ever seen.”

California led with the most total filings, followed by Florida, Ohio, Arizona, Michigan, Texas, Georgia, Nevada, Illinois and New York.

U.S. home prices fell 15.8 percent in May, the most since at least 2001, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index. One-third of home sellers in the second quarter lost money, Zillow.com, a Seattle-based provider of home valuations, reported this week.

Foreclosures could put 8.4 percent of total U.S. homeowners, or 12.7 percent of homeowners with mortgages, out of their homes, according to New York-based analysts at Credit Suisse. About 53 percent of subprime borrowers, those with poor or incomplete credit histories, will have negative equity in their homes this year, and that percentage will rise to 63 percent next year, the analysts said in an April 23 report.

Chrysler Announces Plans to Retool and Expand Jefferson North Assembly

TRAVERSE CITY — Chrysler LLC said Wednesday it would invest $1.8 billion retooling and expanding its Jefferson North Assembly Plant to build a new car-based sport utility vehicle to be sold under the Jeep nameplate.

The company’s vice chairman and president, Tom LaSorda, said the money would be used “in new vehicle programs” and a 285,000-square-foot expansion of the plant “including a new body shop that will allow increased flexibility and higher output.”

LaSorda, attending the Center for Automotive Research’s Management Briefing Seminars, told reporters at lunch that the plant would build at least 120,000 vehicles including a next-generation Jeep Grand Cherokee under the program beginning in the spring of 2010. The vehicle will have the company’s all-new more fuel-efficient Phoenix engine and a more advanced axle.

Gasoline Prices Continue Fall

NEW YORK, Aug. 10 (UPI) — Retail gasoline prices have fallen for the 24th straight day, a AAA survey of gas station sales showed.The national average price for a gallon of regular gas are down more than 7 percent from the record high of $4.114 on July 16, CNNMoney.com reported Sunday.

Even with gas prices falling, Friday’s national average price is more than $1 higher than it was a year ago.

In Alaska, the state with the highest prices, drivers pay an average of $4.63 a gallon, the AAA study found. Oklahoma and Missouri have the lowest gas prices, at $3.58 a gallon.

Diesel, meanwhile, is up nearly 55 percent from last year’s levels. The national average price for diesel fuel fell Sunday to $4.557 a gallon.

The AAA study is based on data from credit card swipes at 85,000 U.S. fuel stations.

Maryland Mayor’s Dogs Killed After Botched Pot Raid, FBI Opens Probe

When the shooting stopped, two dogs lay dead. A mayor sat in his boxers, hands bound behind his back. His handcuffed mother-in-law was sprawled on the kitchen floor, lying beside the body of one of the family pets that police had killed before her eyes.

What police left behind was a house stained with blood and a trail of questions about their conduct. No other evidence of illegal activity was found, and no one was arrested at Mayor Cheye Calvo’s home in this small bedroom community near College Park.

This week Prince George’s police arrested two men for orchestrating a plot to deliver marijuana to the addresses of unsuspecting recipients — among them, Calvo’s wife, Trinity Tomsic.

“Trinity was an innocent and random victim of identity theft. Apparently, so were four or five other county residents whose names and addresses were stolen and used as addresses on drug packages,” Calvo said at a news conference outside his house, near a garden of tomatoes and strawberries.

“However, Trinity and our family have not been treated as victims of a crime. Instead, our home was invaded. Our two beloved Labrador retrievers are dead. My mother-in-law and I were tied up for nearly two hours,” he said. “We were harmed by the very people who took an oath to protect us.”

Detroit Mayor Jailed

DETROIT, Michigan (CNN) — Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick was jailed Thursday after a judge found that he had violated terms of his bond by taking an unauthorized trip to Canada last month.

Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s booking photo from the Wayne County Sheriff’s Department.

Kilpatrick, who is facing felony charges of perjury, obstruction of justice and misconduct of office, had been free on $75,000 bond.

“It’s very unfortunate,” said Kenneth Cockrel Jr., president of the Detroit City Council and one of Kilpatrick’s critics. “It’s another sad chapter in an ongoing saga, which I hope can be brought to a close soon. It’s not good for the city of Detroit; it’s not good for the southeastern Michigan region; it’s not good for the entire state.”