Foreclosures - February Sees Further Rise In Foreclosures

February Sees Further Rise In Foreclosures

March 17th, 2008

Although across the country foreclosures jumped by 60% in February 2008, in comparison to the surge in January there has been a modest decrease. According to online reliable tracking, 223,651 houses slipped into foreclosures last month – the numbers including default and sale notices as well as bank repossessions. The banks took over 46,508 units – double the number of 2007. Compared to January the foreclosure numbers fell by 4%.

Experts opine that this decrease is nothing to crow about as this happens every year at this time of the year – seasonal phenomena. In January the number of foreclosures increase as people struggle with excess expenses incurred during the Christmas festivities. February sees things settling down to a relatively routine level.

Senior economist, Jared Bernstein from Economic Policy Institute says that all the efforts taken by the government and various consumer groups have so far not yielded any results. The measures have not failed but no success is showing. There is hope that the injection of liquidity into the credit markets by Federal Reserve might help the foreclosure crisis but so far the previous moves have had no impact.

The highest number of foreclosures have been reported from Nevada, California and Florida. In Nevada one out of 165 houses are in foreclosure calculating to a rise of 68% from what it was a year ago in February 2007. In California foreclosures were up by 131% year-over-year. There were 53,629 filings. In Florida there were 32,447 foreclosure listings – up by 69% in comparison to the same time in 2007. Amongst the metro regions the first rankers were California and Florida. Cape Coral-Fort Myers in Florida was worst hit with one out of 84 houses being stained with foreclosure. It was six to seven times higher than the national average. Stockton in California had one of 87 houses in foreclosure in February. Speculative investing is being blamed for what has happened in California and Florida

Michigan and Ohio were not far behind with each listing 10,000 foreclosures in February. Foreclosures emanated from the Rust Belt states where the economy had been bad for a long time. The collapse of the sub-prime mortgage accelerated the trouble.

As the entire country reels under the foreclosure curse charges and counter charges are being slammed at scapegoats. The dollar continues to tumble as words about recession is haunting the power corridors while homeless people suffer and groan under rising prices.