Don’t be shocked by rising foreclosure numbers

The economy is getting worse not better, no matter how much the media tries to spin different reports. People who are shocked by the foreclosure rates who work in the industry are in denial about the state of the economy. We have lost millions of jobs in the last 18 months. The national unemployment rate is at 9% and double digits in many cities across America. Most of the states can’t even meet their budgets because of falling tax revenues which is related to the increasing number of foreclosures.

CNN.Money:

“April was a shocker,” said Rick Sharga, a spokesman for RealtyTrac. “I would have bet on a dip because March foreclosures were so high.

Instead, filings inched up 1% from March and rose 32% compared with April 2008. There were 63,903 bank repossessions, the last stop in the foreclosure process. More than 1.3 million homes have now been lost to foreclosure since the market meltdown began in August 2007.

The increasing foreclosures will force RealtyTrac to rethink its forecasts, according to Sharga. “We had been predicting 3.4 million filings for the year,” he said, “but we’ll blow those numbers out of the water.”

The lion’s share of April’s filings were ones in the early stages of the process, such as notices of default, according to James Saccacio, RealtyTrac’s CEO.

Bank repossessions actually fell 11% for the month, compared with March. That’s due, according to Saccacio, to the many legislative and company moratoriums that have prevented the foreclosure process from starting on delinquent loans.

I believe the economy’s recovery is tied into the housing recovery. The recession started because of the housing bubble bursting. It is still deflating and the current Obama administration has not really dealt with this issue. They are spending trillions to prop up bankrupt companies with taxpayer sponsored bailouts with regretful results. The trillions of dollars already wasted through these bailouts could have been better spent helping the American people instead of paying CEO bonuses and paying for monthly upkeep of insolvent companies. The bailed out companies are still asking for more money.