Until recently, the rise in foreclosures seems to have been a phenomenon that would live Fairfax County alone. According to The Examiner, though, that is no longer the case:
Fairfax County saw five times the number of home foreclosures in the first half of 2007 as it had during the same period last year, according to county figures. The problem grew as homeowners increasingly found themselves unable to pay their mortgages or sell their houses in a cooling market.
�Fairfax, basically, is not immune from what�s going on in the rest of the country,� said Ira Rheingold, executive director of the National Association of Consumer Advocates.
To blame for the rash of foreclosures � which grew in Fairfax County from 190 in the first two quarters of 2006 to 987 for the same period in 2007 � were lenders who qualified homebuyers for adjustable-rate mortgages they were later unable to afford, Rheingold said. And with the housing market on a decline, those owners found it tougher to sell their houses.
�The incredible [foreclosure] spikes that we�re seeing right now really are a product of banks being out of control in their lending practices,� he said.
Why is it the bank’s fault ? Why not blame the people who bought homes that they plainly couldn’t afford and didn’t take the time to educate themselves about the pitfalls of those interest-only loans they were qualifying for ?
I work for CurrentForeclosures.com, a foreclosures site and have seen a huge increase in the number of foreclosures in the past 7 months. I believe it is a combination of not only sub-prime and ARM mortgages, but also the high number of people who have gotten loans with interest rates at an all time low… in addition to the rapid depreciation in some areas and the difficulty some are experiencing in selling their homes.