Home Foreclosures Jump In Third Quarter: Regulators

Home foreclosures jump in 3rd quarter: regulators | Reuters

U.S. home foreclosures jumped in the third quarter and banks' efforts to keep borrowers in their homes dropped as the housing market continues to struggle, U.S. bank regulators said on Wednesday.

The regulators said one reason for the increase in foreclosures is that banks have "exhausted" options for keeping many delinquent borrowers in their homes through programs such as loan modifications.

Newly-initiated foreclosures increased to 382,000 in the third quarter, a 31.2 percent jump over the previous quarter and a 3.7 percent rise from the same quarter a year ago, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) said in a quarterly mortgage report.

The number of foreclosures in process increased to 1.2 million, a 4.5 percent increase from the second quarter and a 10.1 percent increase from a year ago, according to the regulators.

Treasury launched HAMP to try to find a way to reduce mortgage payments for struggling homeowners who wanted to keep their homes but who were at imminent risk of foreclosure.

But it is widely regarded as a flawed program, and the incoming Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Representative Darrell Issa, has called for it to be ended.

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1. Subprime, the peculiar practice of putting people in homes they frankly can't afford, via inordinate exercise of adjustable interest rates, balloon payments, low qual's and no qual's, negative amortizations, et al, is the particular pointy pin that popped our perversely expanding bubble and brought us all here.

2. Since the POP heard round the world, what have we seen but MORE OF THE SAME?

3. The public bailouts of banks TOO BIG, their exemption from Obama's half baked reg reform, the exclusion of fannie and fred, the disproportionate payoff to UAW, the obscene bonuses for those AIG greedheads grandfathered in by Geithner and Dodd...

4. What have we learned?

5. Obama's Home Affordable Modification Plan, HAMP, is universally considered a "dismal failure," as southern California rep Jackie Speier (who survived Jonestown, having accompanied Leo Ryan on his tragic excursion) called it.

Obama Loan-Modification Effort

6. Fully HALF of those who've qualified for Hamp have ALREADY REDEFAULTED.

Half of U.S. Home Loan Modifications Default Again (Update1) - Bloomberg

7. Another half million have dropped out because the paperwork is just too complicated, they say.

Obama’s Loan Modification Program a Bust So Far – Less than 1% of Applicants Get Relief | The Chicago 77

8. It recalls Cash for Clunkers.

7 On Your Side: NY dealerships dropping Cash for Clunkers | 7online.com

9. Remember this---if you've paid off your 30 year old 3 bedroom, 1.5 bath rancher, you're still being asked to finance your neighbor's shiny new 4/2.5 with the finished basement and the pretty pool.

10. There are many deserving of blame for what brought us here, including George W What's-His-Name, who repeatedly bragged about his record high minority home ownership.

11. But bottom line---there's no basement in sight for our heaving housing market.

12. And we CANNOT even begin real recovery til we find it.

13. Indeed, construction and real estate, after two years of "stimulus," bailouts and Hamp, are demonstrably WORSENING.

14. There are millions more foreclosures darkening our hilly horizon.

Forecast: More Than 8 Million Foreclosures By 2012 « HousingWire

15. Spin, anyone?

The Prof

Leftists don't like to talk about such things when a leftist is president because it detracts from the orthodox narrative. There will be millions more foreclosures over a number of years before housing gets back on its feet.