Foreclosures ensnare low-income renters

Karen Tapia-Andersen / Los Angeles Times

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At a Lake Elsinore housing office, Kelly Porec, left, goes over paperwork with Ruth Cordoba, a 28-year-old mother of three who has brought along 3-year-old Joseph. Cordoba is trying to find another place to live after she and her children were evicted from a Section 8 rental that had fallen into foreclosure.

Tenants subsidized by federal Section 8 funds are finding themselves out of a home when the landlord defaults.

Ruth Cordoba has never owned a home, but she is feeling the effects of the mortgage meltdown acutely.

Cordoba, 28, rented a three-bedroom home in Riverside for six months with the help of so-called Section 8 funds, money provided by the federal government through local housing agencies. In June, when her landlord could no longer make the mortgage payments on the house Cordoba was renting, she and her three children had to move to a hotel.

"I never missed a rent payment," Cordoba said. "Then I hear someone outside one morning, and I go outside and see a sign on my door that says they're auctioning the house."

The collapse of home mortgage lending, which according to U.S. Housing Secretary Steve Preston may lead to 2.5 million foreclosure filings nationwide this year, sent shock waves up the income strata -- from home buyers who took out subprime loans they couldn't pay, through banks that couldn't cover their losses on those loans, and onto high-end investors who had bought the banks' bad loans.

Now the mortgage crisis is radiating downward and cracking the already fragile finances of people like Cordoba. There are more than 300,000 households getting Section 8 assistance in California, and their median income is $14,428, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
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Jail, foreclosures occupy Richland sheriff

MANSFIELD -- Radios, Tasers, ping pong tables and inmate uniforms were all on the $93,650 list of needs the sheriff's department presented to commissioners Tuesday.

"We're kind of getting nickled and dimed to death," Sheriff Steve Sheldon said of the list compiled by Maj. Roger Paxton. "We've burned up a lot of our resources."

Sheldon said he hired four women last week and has plans to hire 10 more people. He is authorized to have 72 people on a staff that is now at 56.

The sheriff, accompanied by Paxton and Chief Deputy Rick Reeves, met with the board about some of the ongoing issues at the $21.5 million facility that houses both city and county inmates. Commissioners asked Sheldon to break down the list of needs to items that will be used for 20 years or more so they can decide where funding might come from.

Commissioner Ed Olson commended Paxton for doing an excellent job in running the 260-bed jail, but said it has numerous technology problems. The county is withholding about $200,000 in payments until vendors make things right, he said, citing the telephone system. Olson also said the county is spending less money on overtime at the jail than it will when the facility is fully staffed.

"We are in budget, if not slightly below budget," Olson said.

Paxton said the sheriff's department moved everything it could from the old jail rather than buying new. The jail population was listed at 265 Tuesday.

Sheldon, civil division deputy sheriff Kathy West and Clerk of Courts Lin Frary also discussed House Bill 138, which requires sheriffs to file deeds for foreclosure sales. The law that goes into effect Sept. 11 was designed to help properties from being in limbo if deeds aren't filed. It gives local governments more tools to get control of vacant tax-delinquent parcels.

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Foreclosures May Distort Housing Data

As if the housing market wasn't scary enough, the record-setting surge in foreclosures could be distorting some of the closely watched housing data used to gauge the market's health.

The foreclosure glut is making listings of homes for sale a less reliable indicator, because much of the distressed inventory might be left out. In addition, fire-sale prices for such properties may also be skewing volume figures.

Some real estate analysts say this may indicate that housing conditions are worse than they now look, dampening hopes that the troubled market could soon be bottoming out.

The combination of weak housing sales, falling home values, tighter credit conditions and a slowing economy have left financially strapped homeowners in a tough spot — some borrowers have no other choice but to foreclose if they can't find a buyer for their home or pay or refinance their loans.
Nationwide, more than 272,000 homes received at least one foreclosure-related notice in July, up 55 percent from about 175,000 in the same month last year and up 8 percent from June, RealtyTrac Inc. said.

Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac monitors default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions. More than 77,000 properties, or 28 percent, were repossessed by lenders nationwide in July, up from 16 percent a year ago, the company said.

"The wave of foreclosures is unprecedented, making it difficult to analyze, difficult to gauge how large it will get or how bad it will make things," Deutsche Bank analyst Nishu Sood said in an interview.
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I-Team: New Wave of Foreclosures May Hit Las Vegas

Home prices may be off nearly 30-percent in Las Vegas, prompting many to predict the worst of the housing crisis may be over. But some Realtors know another round of foreclosures may happen in the next few months, flooding the valley with vacant homes. And people have two things to blame: liars and ninjas.

They may be new terms for a lot of us, but liar loans and ninja loans helped push the housing market to the brink of collapse. Now the rates are changing again in September and the scars from those liars and ninjas run deep.

Many consider them the villains in the housing crisis, and Realtor Cynthia Glickman says their reputation has been tarnished, "Oh yeah, look at these people, you know. They're liars. They're getting what they deserve."

The term liar loan comes from a lending practice allowing potential homebuyers to fib on their yearly income. Tell a white lie based on your green and you get a bigger house and avoid banking scrutiny.

"Okay, I'll pay the extra half-a-percent interest rate so that I don't have to provide you with mountains of paperwork," said Glickman.

It's the same situation for the stealthy ninja loans. Ninja means No Income, No Job, No Assets -- essentially handing out loans to people who had no right, or money, to afford a home.

"They assumed the values of the homes were going to go up. So they figured, what's the worst that could happen?" said Glickman.

The lenders were caught up partly in greed, partly in speculation, hoping the sky-high housing market would keep rising.

"It's a win-win situation. We either get the interest on the loan or we get the property and we get the money," said Glickman.
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Official seeks foreclosure moratorium

SAN DIEGO, Aug. 26 (UPI) -- San Diego City Attorney Mike Aguirre will ask the City Council to declare a moratorium on home foreclosures, he told Legal Newsline on Tuesday.

Aguirre said he will formally make his request to councilors during their Sept. 9 meeting. On Tuesday, Aguirre's office submitted a draft resolution seeking the crisis designation, Legal Newsline reported.

"According to the latest reports," Aguirre said, "foreclosures in the city are up 213 percent, the highest number in the history of the city."

Aguirre's draft resolution states: "The City of San Diego is experiencing a crisis in the real estate market fueled by an unprecedented number of foreclosures in the wake of lending institutions' predatory lending practice and widespread use of sub-prime loans."

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Foreclosures Mean Crises for H.I.V. Positive Renters

Andrew Henderson/The New York Times

Sabrina Wilson with her son Kevin Harris. She says she has been turned down many times in her search for new housing.

Mrs. Wilson, whose H.I.V. was diagnosed 18 years ago, had always dreaded the thought of having to find another landlord who would accept her rental subsidy from the city. But this time, because her current landlord faced foreclosure, the sense of urgency landed her in the hospital.

“I got sick because of the stress,” said Mrs. Wilson, who is 51 but moves at the pace of an octogenarian. “I cried day in and day out. Where am I going to stay? Where am I going?”

At least 50 H.I.V.-positive renters have complained to city housing organizations in the past months of being forced out or threatened with eviction because of foreclosures. The agencies say they do not know the exact number of families in housing trouble because there is no centralized system for tracking them, but all say that H.I.V.-positive renters are in a particular squeeze.

High rental rates, combined with insufficient public benefits and ineffective antidiscrimination laws, can extend their housing search to a year or more. Unless the landlord is forthcoming, or the bank is diligent in notifying them, tenants may not learn of a foreclosure until they have just a few months to move, putting them in a crisis situation.

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Construction inches up as foreclosures dip from last month

The Colorado Springs housing market got a bit of good news Friday as housing construction rebounded slightly in July from June's weak performance, while mortgage foreclosures fell from the previous month for the second time in the past three months.

Single-family home building permits in El Paso County totaled 108 in July, down 37.6 percent from a year earlier but up 11.3 percent from June's dismal total, according to a report issued Friday by the Pikes Peak Regional Building Department. The increase from the previous month was the first time housing construction numbers have risen from June to July in six years.

"I think we have hit bottom (in June) and the pace is picking up a little bit," said Mike Fenton, vice president of operations for the Colorado Springs division of Century Communities LLC. "For the first half of the year we and other builders were selling more homes than we were permitting because we were selling off our unfinished inventory. Now that we have worked off that inventory, we and others will be pulling more permits in the second half of the year."

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Lee County foreclosures up 3 percent in July

Foreclosures in Lee County were up slightly in July from the previous month, continuing the housing market's downward trend.

There were 2,467 foreclosures last month, up 3 percent from the 2,390 foreclosures in June. In July 2007, there were 1,045 foreclosures.

"The trend continues, it hasn't abated," said Jeff Tumbarello, director of the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investors Association, which released the numbers today.

Tumarello said he expects the number of foreclosures to drop soon, it won't stay bad forever.

"Foreclosures are doing what they're doing, but the good news is that people are buying foreclosures, so at least there is a demand for these," Tumbarello said.

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Lee County foreclosures at 2,467 record high

July was another month of record foreclosures in Lee County and very little new construction of single-family homes.

There were 2,467 foreclosures last month, up 3 percent from the 2,390 foreclosures in June, while permits for new single-family homes could best be described as a mixed bag - up in Cape Coral, down almost everywhere else, according to numbers released Friday.

Not all is bad. People are taking advantage of bargains in the real estate market, giving hope Southwest Florida could soon stabilize itself, housing leaders said.

"Foreclosures are doing what they're doing, but the good news is that people are buying foreclosures, so at least there is a demand for these," said Jeff Tumbarello, director of the Southwest Florida Real Estate Investors Association, which tracks foreclosures.

"For every two deeds they take back, they've been selling one," Tumbarello said.

Still, the numbers paint an ugly picture even for the biggest optimist. In July 2007 there were 1,045 foreclosures. Last month's record figure was the fourth consecutive month foreclosures topped 2,000.

The gluttony of existing and foreclosed homes on the market isn't doing the construction industry any favors.

Community development administrators from Bonita Springs and county government - which includes Lehigh Acres, Estero, south Fort Myers and North Fort Myers - reported drops in the number of permits issued for new single-family homes in July.

Only Cape Coral had a bit of good news, reporting 22 permits for new single-family homes were issued in July. That's the third highest monthly total this fiscal year, which began in October.

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Could foreclosures help the Valley's housing market?

As the number of foreclosures increase in the Valley, some believe it may help the ailing housing market by attracting buyers looking for a good deal.

"The market is still sinking, but it's exciting, the banks are about to become the major player in the Valley," said real estate agent Stanley Fosha.

The banks will become critical because of the number of foreclosures and more and more people will be dealing banks rather than a seller when buying a home.

"Organic sales will decrease significantly, private party to private party are going to be the minority of transactions that happen in the Valley," Fosha said.

Fosha expects many more foreclosures to pop up within the next few months.

"There are 24,000 homes in foreclosure right now, 15,000 have been taken back, that's 38 to 39,000 homes right there that could be on the market in the next 90-days," Fosha said.

The John Hall & Associates agent points to an area north of Paradise Valley in Phoenix as an example of foreclosures fueling buyers.

Foreclosures: Worst still to come, experts say

Phoenix had a staggering 534 percent increase in foreclosures in the first half of 2008, and it appears the worst may be yet to come.

The percentage gain represents an increase of about 5,000 homes foreclosed from year to year, according to data provided by Information Market.

"This is not surprising," said Phoenix City Councilman Claude Mattox, who represents the hardest-hit areas of the city. "We're well aware of the problem, and we are doing all we can to mitigate it."

The real tidal wave may be yet to come.

Phoenix had 12,573 foreclosure notices for the first half of the year, and experts say more than half of them are likely to become foreclosures.

The hardest-hit parts of town were the west and southwest sides, where increases of 700 percent or more were common. Only one other area, the eastern portion of northeast Phoenix's Desert Ridge, had a similar increase, but it had far fewer foreclosures.

US home foreclosures jump 14% in 2nd quarter: survey

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US home foreclosures leapt nearly 14 percent in the second quarter from the previous quarter, research group RealtyTrac said Friday in a sign of deepening housing woes.

On an annual basis, home foreclosure filings soared 121 percent from the same period in 2007, RealtyTrac said in releasing a survey of the country's 100 largest metropolitan areas.

Foreclosures have spiked in the worst housing slump in decades and a related credit crisis that have brought the economy to a crawl.

With home prices falling and unemployment and inflation rising, homeowners are increasingly hard-pressed to make their home loan payments.

RealtyTrac said that foreclosure filings were reported on 739,714 US properties during the second quarter.

The California-based company said that one in every 171 US households had received a foreclosure filing and the distress was nationwide.

According to the survey, 48 of the 50 states and 95 of the 100 major city regions had experienced year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity.

"Although much of the fallout from foreclosures is being driven by rampant activity in a few states, such as Nevada, California, Florida, Ohio, Arizona and Michigan, most areas of the country are seeing at least some increase in foreclosure activity," said RealtyTrac chief executive James Saccacio said in a statement.

Nevada, California, Arizona and Florida, where home prices had boomed for several years before the collapse of the US housing market in 2006, led the country in foreclosures.

Foreclosures shutter Sorrento Springs homes

Sheila Ruest (left) and her daughter, Shelby, walk along Terragona Drive in Sorrento Springs. (ROBERTO GONZALEZ, ORLANDO SENTINEL / July 16, 2008)

It was once a young couple's dream house -- a four-bedroom piece of paradise overlooking a golf course.

Now it is a financial albatross.

A phone book, soggy from weeks of afternoon rain, lies in a puddle by the doorstep. A family of wasps nests in the once-grand entryway. Weeds sprout between the brick pavers of the driveway. The place sits empty -- just like the house next door and the one across the street and a half-dozen more down the block.

This is Terragona Drive in Sorrento Springs, an upscale development amid the lush, rolling pastureland of rural Lake County. It has an 18-hole golf course, a resortlike clubhouse, tennis courts, walking trails and neat rows of two-story, earth-toned homes with architectural flourishes.

But like dozens of developments throughout Central Florida, Sorrento Springs blossomed circa 2005, just as the housing market began to wither. Now it is rife with foreclosures.

There are investors who gambled on ever-rising housing prices -- and lost. There are families whose breadwinners lost their jobs -- and now face losing their homes. There are kids who have lost friends; moms who've lost support networks; renters who have been booted out because the banks are foreclosing on their landlords.
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Shelters get more animals due to foreclosures

PHOENIX - People who face foreclosure and have to get rid of pets are contributing to an increase in the number of animals at shelters across metropolitan Phoenix.

Some distressed homeowners often find themselves in smaller rental homes or apartments after losing their home, and many of those rentals don't allow pets.

Many owners take their animals to shelters, hoping their pets will find new homes. Others simply move without their pets, leaving them behind in the backyard or abandoning them on the side of the road.

The Arizona Humane Society has received more than 1,000 abandonment calls this year, nearly double the number at this time last year. Other shelters and rescues also have reported significant increases because of foreclosures.
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Metro foreclosures drop

Finally, some good news on foreclosures: Filings in the seven-county Denver area in the second quarter fell by 7.5 percent from the first quarter.

There were 6,992 foreclosure filings in the metro area in the second quarter, compared with 7,565 filings in the first quarter.

In the first half of the year, however, foreclosures are still up 15.6 percent from the same period in 2007.

Foreclosures remain on a record pace with 14,600 filings received in the first six months by public trustee offices in Adams, Arapahoe, Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties, compared with 12,626 in the same period last year. But experts are encouraged that the pace of foreclosures is slowing.

In the first half of 2007, foreclosures rose by 25 percent from the same period in 2006, for example.

Adams County saw a 48 percent increase in foreclosures in the first six months of 2007 compared with the same period in 2006, while this year foreclosures are up 12 percent compared with the first half of 2007.

"I'm hoping that this foreclosure tsunami that has wiped out so many homes is starting to roll back," said Ed Jalowsky, principal of Hottest Homes Realty. "But I still think it is going to take six to 12 months for it all to work itself out."
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Help for Foreclosures in Region 8

JONESBORO, AR (KAIT) -- In the past two years the number of foreclosures has doubled nationwide and we're starting to see the impact here in Region 8. While there are a lot of people in Region 8 that haven't been touched by the mortgage crisis, that doesn't mean there aren't those out there that are struggling with it right now.

A recent grant from West Tennessee Legal Services is helping legal aid of Arkansas help residents try to save their homes from foreclosure.

"It's called housing counseling. Someone will come in and they're a few months behind on their mortgage and we'll look at their budget and look at what caused them to get behind," said Legal Aid of Arkansas attorney Brian Miles.

Attorney Brian Miles said in a lot of cases you can save your home and they are here to help you try to do it.

"Maybe they've had medical problems. Maybe their interest rate's gone up. They had an adjustable rate mortgage, but now it's gone up to where they can't make the payments. We find out what they can pay and then we make proposals to the lenders to try to save their home," said Miles.
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Foreclosures Affect Pets, Too

ROGERS — People aren’t the only ones affected by recent foreclosures in Northwest Arkansas — so is Fido.

Animal shelters are seeing an increase in abandoned animals related to the economic downturn. Higher costs to maintain homes and put food on the table also affect what money is available to feed the family pet.

The Bella Vista Animal Shelter receives an average of two to three calls a day from people needing to surrender their pets, said Donna Miles, the shelter’s manager.

Calls include those who say “I can’t keep my pet” to a couple getting a divorce who want to surrender the family pet, Miles said.

During the month of May, Benton County filings for foreclosure totaled 286, up 127 from the same month last year, according to  Realtytrac.com In the first five months of this year, foreclosures have more than doubled — 1,286 filings this year, compared with 540 in 2007.

Washington County’s foreclosure rate in May was up 78 percent — 186 filings compared with 104 a year ago. In the first five months of 2008, foreclosures also increased 78 percent — 769 filings compared with 432 filings in the same period in 2007.
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Will Foreclosures Affect Voting Rolls?

(AP) Election officials worry that the state's home foreclosure problem will pose a problem this November for voters still registered at their former address, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Voters in pivotal Ohio with outdated addresses face possible pre-election challenges and trips to multiple polling places. They also are more likely to cast provisional ballots that might not be counted.

"It's a real issue," said Daniel Tokaji, an Ohio State University law professor who specializes in elections. He wonders whether foreclosures might explain the increasing percentages of provisional votes cast between 2004 and Ohio's latest election, the presidential primary in March.

Ohio provided President Bush with an 118,000-vote victory in 2004, giving him the electoral votes he needed to win the election.

Nearly 3,700 people are registered to vote at Columbus addresses the city lists as vacant, according to records maintained by the city's code-enforcement office and the Franklin County Board of Elections, The Columbus Dispatch reported.

The number of voters on the move is higher than that. The Franklin County Board of Elections sent notices in January to about 27,000 residents who had filled out change-of-address forms but failed to update their voter registrations.

Only about 10,000 had responded through the end of May, but deputy elections director Matthew Damschroder said that partly accounted for a 25 percent increase in new registrations and address changes compared with 2004.
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More Foreclosures, More Home Fires

The biggest surge of mortgage defaults in seven decades coincides with an increase in blazes in foreclosed properties led by states with the most repossessed homes, according to fire safety officials in Nevada, Massachusetts and Ohio...

"Home arsons follow foreclosure trends, with a lag," [Coalition Against Insurance Fraud spokesman James] Quiggle said, pointing to an increase after the last housing slump when the number of blazes reached 116,600 in 1992 from 111,900 in 1990. "We're facing a potential spike in arson like we've never seen before."

A National Fire Protection Association official says that nearly two thirds of all blazes in "unsecured vacant buildings" have been set intentionally, Bloomberg reported.

Making matters even worse, fires in vacant structures—such as those that have been foreclosed upon—present a more dangerous scenario for firefighters.
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Foreclosures to rise, whomever wins White House

Home foreclosures will keep rising next year no matter who is elected president in November.Even the optimism that surrounds a new president taking office cannot resurrect home values overnight, and presidents have no direct ability to reduce rising mortgage rates. Nevertheless, Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain both promise help for homeowners facing foreclosure.

Obama supports a broader role for government than does McCain. Both envision the Federal Housing Administration providing new, cheaper mortgages to distressed homeowners who otherwise would have difficulty refinancing into more secure government-insured loans with lower monthly payments.For the plans to work, lenders would have to be willing to take a substantial loss by reducing the amount owed on the loan. But some would have a powerful incentive to do so.

A refinancing deal could allow them to recover far more money than they would get from the costly process of foreclosing on the property and trying to resell it.

Obama supports legislation along these lines by Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., that would help about 400,000 homeowners. People would not have to have good credit to qualify as long as they could show they can afford the new payments.

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