Archive for the 'Finance Foreclosures' Category

With April 17th quickly approaching, many people are dreading the deadline to file income taxes for the 2011 tax year, especially with the current economic situation in our country.

Without a doubt, 2010 was the roughest year for foreclosures in America on record. That year, banks took back roughly 1.05 million home foreclosures, with 2.9 million foreclosure filings occurring. In 2011, those numbers subsided a bit, but only because the foreclosure fraud scandals of 2010 put a virtual halt to the foreclosure process across the country. As a result, only 804,000 homes were repossessed, against nearly 3 million filings.

The number of people facing bank and Freddie Mac foreclosures who have gotten long-term loan modification under the U.S. federal government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) has dwindled in July. According to latest reports, only more than 36,000 homeowners were able to have their mortgages modified during the month.

For renters, buying foreclosures is the most logical thing to do considering the state of the housing market. Aside from the fact that they will no longer be throwing away money in terms of rent, they can take advantage of the savings that these repossessed properties offer.

Bank owned property listings by Genworth Financial have been contained significantly, according to the financial management company.

The Minnesota cities of Minneapolis and Brooklyn Center are offering forgivable-loans to buy bank homes. Under the loan programs, both cities will offer as much as $10,000 down payments and closing costs. And if the buyers remained in their properties for five years, they are not required to pay the loans.

The nonprofit organization Inland Empire Economic Recovery Corp. is trying to gather financial support to boost its efforts to purchase Inland Empire-owned properties on bank foreclosure listings. The organization will then rehabilitate these foreclosure homes to make them livable and place them on the market for sale.

Now is the right time to buy bank foreclosure homes. This is the message that Utah economists want to send to prospective homebuyers, citing low mortgage interest rates and significant drop in home prices as incentives for buying existing and foreclosed homes.

A 4-year-old accounting regulation that standardizes how banks acquired loans is expected to help the banking industry gain revenues and reduce Bank Owned Foreclosures.

The $8,000 tax credit offered to first-time homeowners under President Barack Obama's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has highlighted the role of timing, including luck, in home buying. It has also highlighted the issue of unfairness, such as the exclusion of tax foreclosures in assistance programs.

Allow banks to fail. That is what Republican Senators Richard Shelby of Alabama and John McCain of Arizona suggested even if it means shareholders will also suffer as a consequence.

As tax foreclosure property listings continue to grow longer because of unabated foreclosures, the government has found ways to reduce the number of foreclosed homes. This time with the help of first-time home buyers.

Efforts to add a stipulation in the economic stimulus bill supported by congressional Democrats that would permit bankruptcy judges to minimize mortgages as a possible solution to the foreclosure problem is being resisted by President-elect Obama and his advisers.

Just minutes after President Bush said at a news conference that President-elect Barack Obama just had to "ask" if he needed the remaining $350 Billion bailout funds allocated for foreclosure prevention, Obama did just that. Now Congress has to vote within a 15-day period whether to approve the request.

Pending home resales dropped in October due to continued foreclosures, according to analysis by 34 economists interviewed by Bloomberg News. Pending resale index is viewed as a major economic indicator because it monitors home resale contract signings. Sale closings are usually accomplished about two months later, when the sales are counted as existing-home sales in real estate reports.