Foreclosures surge back with a vengeance

Statistics are most often skewed. This is a prime example. What about the numbers of homeowners who just walked away from their homes? Are they included in these statistics? I think not. And then there are the homeowners who chose not to go the foreclosure route and sell their home at a loss for what they owed the banks. To avoid foreclosure, I sold my home for $55,000 less than what I owed. It's called a Short Sale. I, in turn, filed bankruptcy for my debt to avoid making payments on a house that I no longer possessed. Add these numbers into your statistics and the dilemma becomes even worse. Let's tell the rest of the story. Paul Harvey would have wanted it that way.

Steve, Arvada, CO.

Please address the core crisis, the loss of main street's "primary residence" the single only home, not the "vacation getaway.  Seperate the foreclosed "investment properties" and second "seasonal" dwellings from the main street forclosures on single family, primary residences.  Let's stick to the real sad state of our mortgage crisis.                                   One home, one loss, many lives affected..   Wake up America!

I'm a real estate appraiser in Las Vegas, NV.  Previous reader is somewhat correct...there are a lot of skewed numbers out there.  In a valley approx. 30 miles wide by 60 miles long, we have areas that are barely maintaining values and areas where tracked values have dropped a little over 65% in the past 14-18 months.  Then there are the tracts of new homes that are standing idle - structures half completed or standing completed except for interior cabinets, floor cover, paint and fixtures, awaiting an increase in the market so they can be sold.  There's a lot of main street affected from the bus persons in restaurants that are closing down because families without jobs no longer eat out, to the closing of national chain stores to help that company's bottom line.

Many of the people struggling to stay in their homes here are losing or have lost their jobs, are self employed and have lost business, have lost so much value they will not live long enough to recover and most, including me,  do not qualify for any of the so called help available.  We paid our taxes, we lost our IRA's (or SEP's).  We're 60+ and looking at house payments we historically had the income and savings to pay for.  With that income and savings stripped from us - we are headed to the street in our so called golden years.

I'm looking at purchasing another home at these low prices with a new loan (while I still qualify), and then turning over my current home to the lender "in lieu" of payment.  My credit will be sacked, but my husband (aged 70) and I will have a roof over our heads that will be paid for within 5-10 years.  Again, if we live that long with the situation stress.  Hopefully we won't have to purchase anything with credit for the rest of our lives.

MC has a good point- the solution is to revive the economy from the bottom up.  My idea woud be-

1. Create a Federal Home Loan bank.

2. Any homeowner could go to the bank to apply for a loan to re-finance an existing mortgage at the current appraised value of the home at a rate of 4% interest.

3. Mortgage companies would be required to accept the appraised loan amount as full payment for the existing loan.  Investors who held shares in these loans would be paid off- obviously, some would lose, but the investor would be freed to try again with more common sense.

4.  The home loan bank would be administered by the IRS- why?  They have a lot of people already on salary, but most importantly, the homeowner would agree that the loan is an income tax that is added to what you owe and payable over the life of the loan.  That way, the homeowner would not be able to bankrupt his way out of the loan.