Personal Finance and Money Management

Experts may be talking about a revival of the real estate sector but this is far from being true. Many Americans are still finding it difficult to make mortgage payments and hence, foreclosures are high. Take, for instance, Santa Barbara County. Foreclosures have remained high throughout this year.

The number of foreclosures is pegged at 1,184. Besides 3,141 homeowners are in various stages of default. Banks have already sent them notices about impending takeover. During the corresponding period of the previous year, there were 1,750 foreclosures. Ninety per cent of these foreclosures were recorded in North County.

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Foreclosure auctions in the San Francisco Bay Area have been frustrating first time home buyers as they kept getting outbid by cash-rich investors from auction to auction.

Realtors in the area representing qualified and pre-approved first time home buyers said that many of their clients are getting discouraged by their difficulties in buying units that they find only to lose them to investors who are able to up the price at the auctions.

In one foreclosed home auction held at the courthouse in Contra Costa, a couple bid for a house with a starting price of $149,000. The couple bid until the price got to $180,000. The final price was $265,000, a price level too high for the couple to top.

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The aim of the Obama government to ease the foreclosure crisis is to standardize and expedite the short sale plan. For troubled borrowers who fail to modify their house loans they can take the help of the government’s plan regarding short sale. It is scheduled to kick off within few months.

The plan was sketched by the Treasury in trying to streamline the much criticized process of requiring lenders to make use of documents uniformly used across the nation with time limits and monetary incentives.

Short sale is the best solution when the borrower has gone underwater with the value of the house being more than the due loan amount. I

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Las Vegas foreclosed homes decreased in number in November, improving the ranking of the metro area from the top of the metro area foreclosure rate chart to fifth place, based on data released this week by a California-based research firm.

The pace of foreclosure in Las Vegas slowed down sharply by 33 percent, with one foreclosure posting for every 102 residential units. However, the pace was still much higher than the nationwide pace.

Nationwide, one foreclosure was reported for every 417 residential units, with almost 307,000 households receiving foreclosure notices.

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