Foreclosures Still on the Rise

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - No one needs to be told how bad things have been lately. Bad at the bank, bad on the career front, bad at the gas pump. For many, the bad times have gotten worse—despite a quiet hope that there’s light at the end of the tunnel—and have been exemplified by the bad blood between homeowners and those banks that own the lien.

The Obama administration, in a Jan. 13 New York Times article, claims that the president’s stimulus efforts have had a positive effect and that “in the fourth quarter the stimulus plan’s tax cuts and spending added about 2 percentage points to the gross domestic product.”

That GNP growth doesn’t matter, however, if the bank takes your house away. A Jan. 13 article from BusinessWeek states that 2009 was a terrible year for people facing foreclosure and—believe it not—things are still getting worse.

“The number of foreclosed homes in the U.S. last year increased to a record 2.8 million, a 21 percent rise over 2008,” the article states. Further, the BusinessWeek article claims that the increase represents a rise of “120 percent over 2007 … 2010 may not be much better.”

A Jan. 13 story from the Atlanta Business Journal claimed that things were actually starting to look better, based upon a statement from the Federal Reserve that stated spending was up, unemployment was down and the recession was reversing—at least in the Southeast. But things don’t look so good elsewhere.

Stories from the Flint Journal and from the Associated Press show home foreclosures in Michigan and Florida are still a threat to people’s security, and the hard times are far from over.

“Florida courts have been inundated with foreclosure filings, delaying sales and drowning employees with paperwork. Statewide, foreclosures have driven down prices by a third or more since mid-2006,” reads the AP story. “About 7,000 new foreclosures are filed every month in Miami-Dade alone. Before the foreclosure crisis, Miami-Dade's court was receiving about 5,000 foreclosure filings each year.”