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Posts Tagged ‘home foreclosure’

Home Prices Continue Slide Down

NEW YORK — A closely watched index shows home prices dropped by the sharpest annual rate on record in October.

The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller 20-city housing index released Tuesday fell by a record 18 percent from October last year, the largest drop since its inception in 2000. The 10-city index tumbled 19.1 percent, its biggest decline in its 21-year history.

Both indices have recorded year-over-year declines for 22 straight months. Prices are at levels not seen since March 2004.

FDIC Chief, Says More Help is Needed to Prevent Foreclosures

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — The nation’s top banking regulator warned Tuesday that help for troubled homeowners is failing to keep pace with the foreclosure crisis.

“We’re definitely behind the curve, and we fall further behind the curve every day,” FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair told an audience at the Fortune 500 Forum in Washington, D.C.

According to Bair, the nation’s financial system would be in much better condition today if earlier warnings she made about mortgage modification had been heeded.

Bair began sounding the alarm more than two years ago, warning that lenders had to shore up capital reserves to offset non-performing loans. In October 2007, she told lenders that they should start modifying more at-risk mortgages so borrowers could afford to stay in their homes.

Meanwhile the mortgage mess has ballooned, expanding beyond the housing market into the entire financial sector and the overall economy.

Both the government and the banking industry have tried to slow the mortgage meltdown. Hope Now, the Bush-administration led coalition of banks, loan servicers and community advocacy groups created to tackle the foreclosure problem, says it has has helped 2.7 million homeowners keep their homes since July 2007.

Lenders like JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500) have all recently implemented new loan modification programs.

She told the Fortune 500 Forum that it’s not too late to step up foreclosure prevention initiatives.

“The sooner we do it the better,” she replied. “I see higher delinquencies growing through 2010.”

Acting now would help many families who would otherwise lose their homes. And that would benefit everyone.

“Attacking the financial problem at its roots is the fiscally responsible and smart thing to do,” she said.

90 Year Old Ohio Woman Attempts Suicide as Sheriffs Attempt to Evict Her

CINCINNATI (Reuters) – A 90-year-old Ohio woman, facing eviction from the home she has lived in for 38 years, shot and wounded herself this week, becoming a grim symbol of the U.S. home mortgage crisis.

Addie Polk was found lying on the floor of her home with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to her shoulder when police came to the home on Wednesday to serve an eviction notice, Akron police spokesman Lt. Rick Edwards said on Friday.

Home foreclosure rates are at record highs in the United States, in many cases because buyers with adjustable interest rates could not keep up with sharp increases in monthly payments. The foreclosure crisis has sparked a wider housing market downturn and is at the heart of the U.S. financial crisis.

Foreclosures Double As Home Prices Continue to Slide

July 25 (Bloomberg) — U.S. foreclosure filings more than doubled in the second quarter from a year earlier as falling home prices left borrowers owing more on mortgages than their properties were worth.

One in every 171 households was foreclosed on, received a default notice or was warned of a pending auction. That was an increase of 121 percent from a year earlier and 14 percent from the first quarter, RealtyTrac Inc. said today in a statement.

Nevada was the state with the highest rate. One in every 43 households received a foreclosure notice in the quarter, four times the national average and an increase of 147 percent from a year earlier, according to RealtyTrac.

Foreclosure filings tripled in California, where one in every 65 households was affected, the second-highest rate among states. Arizona had the third-highest rate, with one every 70 households, a more than threefold increase from the second quarter of 2007, RealtyTrac said.

Florida, Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, Georgia, Massachusetts and Illinois rounded out RealtyTrac’s top 10.