Foreclosures On Pace To Hit 3.5 Million

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Alle reden voor de beurs op WallStreet om 10.000+ te laten zien.
Véél meer gezinnen uit huis gezet en veel meer werklozen.
Wonen in tentenkampen kost per slot van rekening véél minder dan in huizen.

Of is het gewoon lucht, m.a.w. High Frequency Trading geleid door Goldman
Sachs & Co.?

Groet / Cees

PS. HFT gaat overigens ten koste van álle handel op de Amerikaanse
beursen, dus óók van ónze pensioenen.

Foreclosures On Pace To Hit 3.5 Million

There were over 900,000 foreclosures in the third quarter as Foreclosures
rise 5 percent from summer to fall.

    The number of households caught up in the foreclosure crisis rose more
than 5 percent from summer to fall as a federal effort to assist
struggling borrowers was overwhelmed by a flood of defaults among
people who lost their jobs.

    The foreclosure crisis affected nearly 938,000 properties in the
July-September quarter, compared with about 890,000 in the prior three
months, according to a report released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc.
That puts foreclosure-related filings on a pace to hit about 3.5
million this year, up from more than 2.3 million last year.

    "The sheer scale of the problem is preventing the loan modification
programs from having the kind of impact we'd all like" said Rick
Sharga, RealtyTrac's senior vice president for marketing.

    Some homeowners are in such a massive financial hole that it's hard to
design a modification that will actually provide lower payments. And
some have avoided paying their monthly bills for a long time.

    According to the RealtyTrac report, there were nearly 344,000
foreclosure-related filings last month, down 4 percent from a month
earlier but still the third-highest month since the report started in
early 2005.

    It was the seventh-straight month in which more than 300,000
households receiving a foreclosure filing, which includes default
notices and several other legal notices that homeowners receive before
they finally lose their homes.

    Banks repossessed nearly 88,000 homes in September, up from about
76,000 a month earlier.

    On a state-by-state basis, Nevada had the nation's highest foreclosure
rate in the July-September quarter. Arizona was No. 2, followed by
California, Florida and Idaho. Rounding out the top 10 were Utah,
Georgia, Michigan, Colorado and Illinois.

As I have stated before, bailing out the banks did nothing for
cash-strapped, unemployed consumers stuck in homes they cannot sell
because they are too far underwater.

Supposedly the administration's programs have helped 500,000 but many of
them will end up defaulting anyway. Assume a 50% failure rate and 250,000
were "helped". Yet we are on a pace for 3.5 million foreclosures.

Moreover, many of those "helped" were probably better off walking away.
Meanwhile unemployment is 9.8% and rising. I expect to see close to 11%
next year and stubbornly high unemployment for a decade.

Good luck getting sustained home price appreciation out of that mix,
especially with boomers retiring and looking to downsize. Structural
problems are massive.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

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