Nationwide headlines are continued to be dominated by foreclosure news and the increasing rate of unemployment. The first quarter of 2009 reported that nearly 6% of borrowers are already behind on their mortgage payments or are in the brink of foreclosure. In comparison to a year ago, this number has doubled. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, it is very alarming to see that the rate of troubled homeowners have doubled in the past year.
In April, 342,000 properties in the US were foreclosed. California posted 96,500 of the total foreclosures of the country. This data is according to a web-based company, RealtyTrac. Senior citizens are also greatly affected with a reported more than 600,000 of them are delinquent on mortgage payments or have already foreclosed properties. AARP reports that older Americans, the ones that have subprime first mortgages, are 17 times more likely to have their homes foreclosed than Americans, of the same age, having prime loans.
The community is dramatically impacted by subprime loans and their much increased rate of foreclosure. A study showed that in areas where subprime loans are prevalent, the number of foreclosure filings is also high. In states where there is a predominance of foreclosure news, subprime mortgages consist of as much as 50 percent of the cases.
Researchers tried to study other factors which could affect the number of foreclosures in an area. The factors included the value of the home, the race of the homeowners and their income levels – but what they found is that the predominant factor was the sub-prime rates. Not surprisingly, one factor that did repeatedly impact the rate of foreclosure was unemployment. Many people simply do not have enough income to keep ahead on their mortgage payments. That’s why MS Foreclosures and other areas as well are skyrocketing. Because of this, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston recommended that unemployed homeowners should be given more focus by policies that aim to fight foreclosures.
The sad truth is that there will still be many more Americans that will be affected by foreclosure in the coming months. (Note: When doing your research online make sure to search for ‘forecloser‘ as well as it is a very common miss-spelling.) But the government has already issued several legislations and policies to minimize the situation. The biggest drawback of such policy changes, is that they take many months to be approved and applied. Many Americans simply do not have that long to wait.
