In 2006, the housing boom in the US began to cool down and increasing foreclosed news has dominated the media ever since.  Many of today’s homeowner’s (maybe as much as 10% of them) simply cannot keep up with their payments.

Many of the foreclosed homes are tied to neighborhoods where subprime martgages were widespread.  MS Foreclosure are just one example. Decreasing home values also contributed to the increase in number of these foreclosures.  Add to that the fact that local government spending has also been cut way back because this decrease in home values has also resulted in a decrease in property taxes and their annual budgets.

There were signs of this coming however, three of them in fact.  First was the bailing out of property owners due to the plummeting prices of real estate.  The second sign was all of the sub-prime loans and adjustable rate mortgages beginning to implode.  Lastly, the third sign has been the fact that even prime rate loan holders are losing their homes now due to job loss and the economic crisis.  In fact, many of these people even have above average or good credit ratings (not for long though).  It is expected that unemployment would contribute to almost 60 percent of mortgage defaults.  Unfortunately, this means that even more foreclosure news will be heard through the rest of this year.

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