8/21/2007
Foreclosures Rising Rapidly — When Will It Stop?
By John W. Schoen - Senior Producer - MSNBC
With fresh data showing home foreclosures on the rise, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are considering various measures to restore a mortgage market now in disarray. Some are suggesting that lenders and borrowers involved in the risky loans that are now going bad should simply suffer the consequences. But supporters of more aggressive measures argue that the government may need to step in before the current mortgage mayhem threatens the wider economy.
U.S. foreclosures continued to rise in July – up 9 percent from June and up 93 percent from a year ago, according to the latest monthly numbers tracked by RealtyTrac, an a Web site that tracks foreclosed properties. Nearly 180,000 fillings – including default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported during the month. That means that one in every 693 U.S. households was hit with foreclosure in July.
Like everything else involving real estate, the impact of the mortgage mess and the ongoing wave of foreclosures has been felt unevenly across the country. Much of the damage has occurred in the states like California and Florida where the housing boom – combined with rampant speculation and easy-money lending – grew the fastest.
Other hard hit states such as Michigan were already battered by weak economic conditions before the recent credit storm hit. Detroit posted a 70 percent month-over-month increase in foreclosures in July, pushing the city’s foreclosure rate to one filing for every 97 households — more than seven times the national average.
