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Saturday, February 11, 2012

Foreclosures To Climb Before Bank Deal Helps U.S. Housing Market

The $25 billion settlement with banks over foreclosure abuses may result in a wave of home seizures, inflicting short-term pain on delinquent U.S. borrowers while making a long-term housing recovery more likely.

Lenders slowed the pace of foreclosures as they negotiated with attorneys general in all 50 states for more than a year over allegations of faulty and fraudulent paperwork used to repossess homes. With yesterday’s agreement, banks are likely to resume property seizures.

“The best thing about the settlement, frankly, is that it will be done,” said Stan Humphries, chief economist for Seattle-based Zillow Inc., a provider of home-sales data. “The shadow of the settlement hung over the market for a year now.”

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What about people who already lost their homes? Obama ran on helping but did nothing.

Anonymous said...

So if you owe 300,000 on a house worth 200,000 you might get some help in the form of reducing the amount your home is worth. If you owe 100,000 on a house worth 200,000 the value of your home will also drop, and guess what...you just lost more money. What about some compensation for all the responsible people who paid their payments and/or own property outright and will lose more than the ones being helped because of this legislation that will drive property values down even further?

Anonymous said...

Conservatism;thats what it's all about,or it should be.How quickly everyone forgets.A big factor in hyper-inflated housing prices was the willingness of John Q public to pay those prices.People of all ages,some financially able and some not,lined up to buy those $300,000 homes because among other things they could.What other possible outcome could there be.Those who used common sense and bought within their means made out ok,with the exception of refinancing when the interest rates plummeted.Even at the height of the housing spike,nice homes for $100,000 were still available,but because damn near anybody could borrow huge amounts of money they chose the maximum house they could purchase.I don't feel sorry for them.

Anonymous said...

The problem I have with all of this is if you bought a house that yOu could not afford and lost it that is your problem. Believe me my income has been cut by almost $60,000 a yr. at the same time I have made sure my house payments have been paid and in doing that my family has had to suffer. I believe if you bought a house just because the bank approved you, you are an idiot. I could hav bought a house at the time I was approved for $500,000 but I did not do that because I knew better.