U.S. Foreclosures Continue to Soar; NYC Still Not Bleeding
More bad news about the national housing market: Approximately 1 in 11 mortgages in the U.S. were in foreclosure or past due at the end of March, according to a report by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The Times notes that 4.8 million loans were in foreclosure or had notched late payments, and the trend has…
More bad news about the national housing market: Approximately 1 in 11 mortgages in the U.S. were in foreclosure or past due at the end of March, according to a report by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The Times notes that 4.8 million loans were in foreclosure or had notched late payments, and the trend has spread beyond subprime-loan holders. The problems are worst, it’s not surprising to hear, in Florida, California and Arizona. An AP article on the findings says the delinquency rate jumped to 6.35 percent in the first quarter of 2008, and the rate of new foreclosures and late payments were the highest on record since the late ’70s. A spokesperson for the Mortgage Bankers Association expects foreclosures and late payments to continue to escalate as home values in many areas continue to plummet, killing off resale potential. In related news, New York City has still remained mostly insulated from the foreclosure epidemic, according to a report Property Shark released earlier this week. The data site’s findings for May showed that New York City’s new foreclosure rate was down from April, though still up significantly from this time last year. There were 313 new foreclosures in May in all five boroughs, with a whopping 177 of those in Queens. By comparison, Property Shark recorded 55 new foreclosures in Brooklyn last month, and even fewer in every other borough.
About 1 in 11 Mortgageholders Face Loan Problems [NY Times]
Record Foreclosures in 1st Quarter [AP via NY Daily News]
Market Reports [Property Shark]
Fiction: “Republicans were more focused on taking money from the middle class to give to the rich”
Fact: Republicans are the party of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Men of action and history, one saved the nation and ended slavery, one established the United States as a world power and solidified this nation’s dominance on the world stage (yes dominance, there are still men with testosterone out here), the last basically ended the titanic struggle between a failed ideology ( founded on the idea that man at his best is only as good as the most mediocre: communism) and democracy which is based on the spirit of the individual and the idea that man’s best is achieved through a full freedom of expression.
Fiction: “…taking money from the middle class to give…to business buddies (in the Bush days.
Fact: That would be the Clinton administration that gave US military secrets to the North Koreans through the Loral Deal, allowed the Chinese Government unprecedented access to the US Presidency through operatives like Johnny Cho and “bhuddist donations”, was involved in scams like Whitewater, Rose Law firm deals and who could forget the last minute pardons for pay scandals; Frank Rich; a convicted billionaire embezzeler and tax cheat pardoned for a donation to the Clinton Library. Then of course : IMPEACHMENT.
Fiction: “….using lower classes to fight pointless wars.”
Fact: recent studies on the US military reveal that the average US soldier is better educated and comes from a higher socio-economic strata than your average American. Look it up if you don’t believe me. and yes, Republican politicians have family in Iraq and Afghanistan:look up Republican representatives from California (like D.Hunter), Missouri, Florida and South Dakota to name a few.
When Liberals and Dems stop talking bullsh.t and actually take the time to realize that Republicans are Americans, that we are not the enemy, that we have legitimate and valid points of view, then we can begin to start talking about an actual change in this nation.
Legion
Is a Republican someone who believes in the power of happy talk to change reality? I thought that faith in happy talk was the mark of the evangelists, that Republicans were more focused on taking money from the middle class to give to the rich (in the old days) or to business buddies (in the Bush days) or using the lower classes to fight pointless wars. Live and learn.
Legion is the human version of a player piano roll. Play that old time rag!
several of us were looking for you, Legion. We needed a laugh. 🙂
Actually since most of my work is on the computer and I work for myself, I can multi-task quite easily.
Glad to hear you’re working hard to support so many on welfare- I certainly hope your fellow Republicans appreciate their handouts.Probably spent it on the lapel pins.
i think this is the lamest thread i have yet read on brownstoner. please spare us the low level cliched political “discussions.”
by the way, bxgrl,
I appreciate you thinking of me while I was away today.
I was hard at work, after all, millions on welfare are depending on me.
Legion
you can almost feel the joy in their posts, these liberals who want nothing more out of life than to see the United States doing poorly.
Hurray, some economic bad news.
Hurray, another step towards not having to explain to my family why I have no money, no career and no future.
If I hope strongly enough maybe we can be in a depression by the time my high school 20 year reunion comes by and I won’t have to explain why I have nothing to show for the last 20 years but a 5 hour a day computer habit.
Come on recession….
lol,
silly rabbits,
see you here next week when the economic numbers even out again.
Legion
4:42- I’m betting on Cancer, the Crab (you know who you are!) and bleached blondes with Persian cats that eat Sheba.
Foreclosures only happen when two things combine: overextended people get in trouble (unemployment, sickness, divorce) (or took on adjustable mortgages that were hopeless from the get-go) AND they can’t sell, pay off the mortgage and move on.
This means that foreclosures only go up AFTER the market has begun to go down. As long as the market is relatively stable, people with individual crises can sell to people who are doing ok, and no one gets foreclosed upon.
So even the tiny number of foreclosures we are now seeing are cause for concern. They mean that someone, somewhere, was unable to sell their house for enough to cover the mortgage, even though the foreclosure process in NY takes over a year. There will always be a few people who are just too dysfunctional to handle a sale, but the numbers today suggest that the REAL sales prices are down enough in some neighborhoods to wipe out some people’s equity.