U.S. Foreclosures Hit Record in August as Housing Prices Fell

[marmar]

from Bloomberg:



U.S. Foreclosures Hit Record in August as Housing Prices Fell

By Dan Levy

Sept. 12 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. foreclosure filings rose to a record in August as falling home prices made it harder to sell or refinance homes to pay off the mortgage, RealtyTrac Inc. said.

Owners of 303,879 properties, or one in 416 U.S. households, got a default notice, were warned of a pending auction or foreclosed on last month. That was the most since reporting began in January 2005. Filings increased 27 percent from a year earlier, about half the annual pace of previous months, because of high default totals in August 2007, the Irvine, California- based seller of foreclosure data said in a statement today.

``The chickens have come home to roost,'' Jim Croft, founder of the Mortgage Asset Research Institute in Reston, Virginia, said in an interview. ``Real estate inflation bailed out an awful lot of bad loans.''

The worst housing slump since the 1930s shows little sign of abating. Home prices in 20 U.S. metropolitan areas declined 15.9 percent in June from a year earlier, according to the S&P/Case- Shiller index. Prices may fall another 10 percent through the end of 2009, according to analysts at Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.

August filings were 11 percent higher than the previous record of 273,001 set in May, according to RealtyTrac. Filings rose 12 percent from July. Bank seizures, the last stage of the foreclosure process, known as real estate-owned or REO properties, more than doubled from a year ago to 90,893.

Defaults rose 10 percent and auctions rose 7 percent from August 2007, said RealtyTrac, which has a database of more than 1.5 million properties. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601213&sid=aWKdjgdwQZQI&refer=home

[SpiralHawk]

1. Highly paid TV pundits do not get it. How republicons have screwed the average American

They see no recession/depression. Yet.

Corporate media spokesmodels prefer to stay in their comfy republicon-money-bucks fluffed balloons.

They have no idea how to be real reporters in service to the truth or the nation.

[Liberal_in_LA]

2. bump