Foreclosure Victims Stagnate Both Financially And Mentally

September 1st, 2008

The distressing foreclosure stories project that foreclosure victims stagnate both financially and mentally. It was a striking eye-opener in the wake of the recent recession in the US. Interviews and surveys of families that have faced the foreclosure axe show that they hope to straighten their financial position to pre-foreclosure status. Undoubtedly they were totally unaware of the national recession and the views of market researchers who opined that the real estate market would never be the same again.

The real estate profession was a national obsession in 2004, but for the people of California it had been the primary focus and employment. The rising graph in the sphere of issue of licenses in California alone spoke volumes for the concentration of the housing industry during the past few years. A 76% rise in the number of licenses issued was seen during the years 2000 to 2007. The actual figures count from 307,051 in 2000 to 543,194 in 2007. During the same period the population in California went up by 11% and figuratively from 33,871,648 in 2000 to 37,700,000 in 2007. Experts’ comment that the massive increase in population depended heavily on the solid real estate market that was already on a saturation point and was unable to foresee an up trend in the near future. The obvious equation was that foreclosures had been on an upward swing while prices of houses were hitting a bottomless end and every county in Southern California was moving from one negative year to another negative year without signs of recovery.

The economic situation worsened when industries connected to the Housing Industry too was affected sparking off unemployment, lay-off and wage-cuts. Most of the Californians were engaged in the construction, finance and insurance, real estate and leasing sectors. These sectors comprise 14% of total employment in California. Adding manufacturing sector employment, it turned out that 1 out of every 4 persons was doing a job in this sector.

Demonstrations revealed that, many of these high-paid jobs no longer wished to create employment, which led to a lay-off of more than 2 million people. They faced a tough time transferring their skills to other industries. With higher inventory, lower prices and easy availability of workers, the market had reached a critical point, where finding a healthy job was difficult. Unfortunately victims who had faced the onslaught of foreclosure refused to acknowledge the gravity of the situation and move on either financially or mentally.