Foreclosures - A WARNING

When credit card companies and banks complained that more than a million people were filing bankruptcy and that was costing them a lot of money, people defended THE BANKS AND CREDIT CARD COMPANIES...and so did Congress with the passage of the Bankruptcy Reform Act of 2005. Of course, there has been no rush to reduce interest rates by credit providers as suggested by some supporters there would be....

If Congress can protect credit card companies from a million bankruptcy filers, what will they do with a million foreclosures?

Irvine, Calif. April 25, 2006 RealtyTrac(www.realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today released its 2006 Q1 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which showed that 323,102 properties nationwide entered some stage of foreclosure in the first quarter of 2006, a 38 percent increase from the previous quarter and a 72 percent year-over-year increase from the first quarter of 2005. The nation'’s quarterly foreclosure rate of one new foreclosure for every 358 U.S. households was higher than in any quarter of last year.

Over 850,000 properties were forclosed on last year, a 38% increase would mean 1,173,000 foreclosures this year. However, the current increase is 72%, if that were to hold 1,462,000 properties would be foreclosed on by the end of the year.

The expectation from the report is over 1.2 million foreclosures. Gas prices might not be having much impact on driving, but the homeowner is getting squeezed.