Housing Still A Big Problem

Housing will be a drag on the economy and the banks for a long time. Housing started this mess and it will not end until foreclosures begin to decline.-Lou

U.S. foreclosures near record, peak in late '10: report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. mortgage foreclosure filings in August hovered near July's record high despite broad efforts to keep borrowers in their homes and will probably rise for another year, according to a report released on Thursday.

Filings -- including notices of default, auction and bank repossession -- dipped 1 percent last month from July's all-time high and were up 18 percent in August from the same month a year earlier, real estate data firm RealtyTrac said.

"The pipeline of early stage foreclosures and delinquent loans is still probably going to overwhelm the system's ability to quickly modify" terms so struggling homeowners can make their monthly mortgage payments, said Rick Sharga, senior vice president at the Irvine, California-based company.

One in every 357 U.S. households with loans got a foreclosure filing in August.

Though lenders are moving in the right direction, Sharga said, RealtyTrac is revising up its estimate for filings this year and now expects a more prolonged foreclosure crisis.

Some 3.4 million households will get a filing this year, up from the prior estimate of 3 million to 3.2 million, and sharply higher than 2.3 million filings last year.

If the forecast is realized, it will be more than four times the filings in 2005, before the deepest housing crash since the Great Depression began.

"We had been thinking that this year would be the peak, but at the rate things are going right now, it's appearing more likely that late 2010 might be the peak year before things start to moderate," Sharga said.
A quick recovery is not in the cards, either.

"I don't expect it to be that 2010 will peak and 2011 will be the wonderful land of Oz," Sharga added."

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