More Foreclosures To Come
Good news is hard to come by on the home front. Foreclosures still loom and they will continue to drive down prices.
The Coming Foreclosure Flood
By Alyssa Katz
Feb 17th 2010 @ 9:45AM
Filed Under: News
Heartened by the recent rise in home prices? Don’t get too comfortable. Standard & Poor’s, the credit-rating agency that tells investors what mortgage-backed securities are worth, reports that the increase was just an illusion. It predicts the nation is about to see a deluge of new foreclosures that will drive real estate values back down.
Blame the “shadow inventory” – nearly 1.8 million homes that are on the road to foreclosure but for all kinds of reasons haven’t gotten there yet.
Many homeowners have fallen behind on their mortgages or stopped paying, but foreclosure has not yet arrived. Mortgage servicers, the folks who send you the bills and file for foreclosure when you can’t pay them, are overwhelmed. Courts, too, are backed up. Mortgage modifications and foreclosure moratoriums have put off the day of reckoning for borrowers, but not forever. And unemployment is sabotaging more homeowners every day.
Read entire article here.
Tags: foreclosures