We hear so many stories now of foreclosed properties changing hands—lost at the Sheriff’s sale as former owners stand by, unable to do anything to stop the process. Tales of horror continue each day. And it’s happening with both residential and commercial properties.  Eviction is one of the few certainties many families can now look forward to. People who thought they were investing in a secure future with the purchase of a house are facing a future on the street. The nation’s socio-economic structure is becoming very wobbly and people are scrambling to find answers.

California’s distressed real estate market is an example. The state’s 2007 foreclosure filings have risen by six times when compared with the same month of September last year.  As the number of foreclosed houses skyrockets, real estate prices are falling fast.  And rental rates are rising.

Everyone in the nation is gradually being affected by the foreclosure crisis, whether homeowners or not. It’s an economic crisis of huge proportions. Walking down the street of almost any city in the nation, you’ll see real estate signs. Foreclosed units lie vacant and the neighborhood becomes a semi-ghost town, with families and businesses finding themselves in tatters.

Couples often blame each other for financial problems, and can’t pull together as they need to in a crisis. Their personal funds, their credit, are all exhausted.  Such a disaster can leave a family feeling alone in a hostile world.
And it’s not easy to make a new start when your property is foreclosed. For one thing, finding a rental isn’t easy after your credit rating’s been shot to ribbons. Landlords want people they can trust to pay the monthly rent.

The subprime mortgage market is really just another word for sleazy banking practices. Today’s money changers—often firms with good reputations—have found a legal way to extract high payments from homeowners, drain their equity and actually steal their homes, using a “bag of tricks” a magician would be proud of.  The built-in traps of the subprime market have taken the homes of more than a million people in just the past year.

And the rest of the economy is being affected, with thousands of job losses resulting from the collapse in home ownership. Major Wall Street firms are losing their stability. And some lenders are going out of business. Bank regulators should have put the brakes on this rising problem long ago. Now it’s too late for many folks.
How were lenders able to get away these scams? Interest rates were low, and housing prices seemed to be rising nonstop. But nobody was regulating the market, and borrowers were enticed by lenders into high-interest, high-fee loans. You could get a loan whether you could afford it or not.  Many families didn’t really understand that their payments would rise to a level they couldn’t afford. Lenders were interested in profits.  Laws that were in place were simply ignored in this laissez-faire atmosphere, and all at the expense of the low-income borrower.

In the schemes they use—really scams—people with limited incomes are taken advantage of, as high payments are extracted from families. Any equity they built up is lost. Ultimately the family loses its home, unless they get help in time.

Just as those “adjustable-rate” mortgages began exploding, wages were falling and prices were rising; people who were paying $1,000 a month at the start of a $150,000 loan were paying $1,400 a month two years later. And because the house prices were tumbling at the same time, people couldn’t refinance or sell their homes to avoid foreclosure. We need to change our way of thinking.

In any event, the best avenue to take is to contact a foreclosure specialist. Find out your rights. See if you might qualify for a government program.  Your situation might be recoverable. Our goal is to help you with your foreclosure.