Freehold NJ House Democrats seek timeout on new foreclosure filings
Posted by administrator on February 15, 2009
Freehold NJ House Democrats seek timeout on new foreclosure filings
Freehold House Dems propose 6-month halt
Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens
Columbus- Ohio House Democrats want to reach back to the Great Depression for a tool to stop foreclosures and keep people in their homes.
The Democratic lawmakers on Monday Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens said they will push legislation putting a six-month moratorium on foreclosures and giving judges leeway to reduce the amount owed in a foreclosure case down to the home’s appraised value.
The timeout on new foreclosure filings would also apply to the hundreds of thousands of cases already in Ohio’s foreclosure system – essentially freezing the system for 180 days. House Democrats outlined the proposal at a Statehouse news conference Monday where House Speaker Armond Budish announced the majority party’s priorities for this session. The only exception to the moratorium Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens would be foreclosures on vacant properties, which would be allowed to proceed.
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Rep. Mike Foley, a Cleveland Democrat who crafted the Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens bill, said it is aimed at giving homeowners a break until other new rules sought by lawmakers in the bill can take effect. An added bonus: possible federal bailout money for distressed properties, he said.
“We’ve got vacant properties all over the place in this Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens state that are killing neighborhoods,” Foley said. “The longer we can keep people in their homes and give them a chance to take advantage of recovery dollars that may be coming in seems like a good thing to me.”
Under the bill, judges would get more leeway to write Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens down mortgages for homeowners who owe more on homes than they are worth.
Foley said that the appraisal – now done at the end of the foreclosure process – would be done first and that judges would be able to knock down the mortgage value to the appraised value.
Other key provisions in the bill would triple the filing fee for a foreclosure action, grant homeowners more notification when lenders are considering filing for foreclosure and set up a database to track who holds the paper on a mortgage. Additionally, lawyers who file foreclosure actions would have to have the ability to negotiate on behalf of the lender with the homeowner – often not the case nowadays with Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens the complicated way that mortgages are packaged and sold off to investors around the globe.
Any House Democratic revamping of the foreclosure system would have to gain support in the Republican-controlled Senate, where the GOP holds a decisive 21-12 edge. At least one prominent Senate Republican has serious problems with the Democratic proposal.
Sen. Tim Grendell, a Chester Township Republican and a Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens lawyer, said imposing a moratorium and allowing judges to alter mortgages would set a “dangerous precedent.” Ohio House Democrats seek timeout on new foreclosure filings – Page 2
Ohio House Dems propose 6-month halt
“I would be greatly concerned with the effect of rewriting private contracts after the fact,” Grendell said. “I don’t think it’s government’s role to force the lender to essentially renegotiate the loan because the market has changed.”
He added: “The Ohio House Democrats need to think about something: when you reach out to those facing foreclosure, then somebody else who invested is going to pay the price for that. Are you going to make those people whole?”
There is precedent in Ohio legislative history for such a moratorium. From May 1933 to April 1939, Ohio lawmakers enacted a series of amendments that effectively blocked Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens the sale of foreclosed property across the state.
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Bill Faith, head of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, a housing advocacy group, said a moratorium alone won’t help, but that the fixes being floated by Democrats held promise. In particular, Faith found merit in the idea that an impartial party such as a judge would be able Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens to write down mortgages.
“I think it makes a lot of sense to make more clear the value of the property for somebody in the referee role,” Faith said. “The issue is the paper value is way off-kilter for what these homes are worth.”
He said recent statistics from the mortgage industry suggest that nearly a quarter of the homeowners in Ohio owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth.
Amanda Wurst, a spokesman for Gov. Ted Strickland, praised Democratic lawmakers for making the legislation a priority but stopped short of saying the governor would Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens support a moratorium.
“We’re interested in exploring more about this legislation with the speaker and the other members of the legislature,” she said.
Ohio’s final foreclosure tally for 2008 isn’t official, but preliminary numbers indicate that it will pass the record-setting total of 83,230 set in 2007.
“We will break that record when the 2008 numbers are Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens released; we’re just waiting for a few courts to report their final numbers,” said Chris Davey, a spokesman for the Ohio Supreme Court, which maintains records for new foreclosure filings from each of the 88 counties.
Cuyahoga County will be one of the few small bright spots when the figures are officially released, even though the county still has a huge number of cases. The county reported 13,858 new foreclosure filings in 2008, a decrease of 2.9 percent from 2007. Summit County reported 4,113 new Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens filings last year, a 14.5 percent drop. But other Northeast Ohio counties – Lake, Medina, Portage, Lorain, Ashtabula and Geauga – all reported increases in foreclosure filings last year over 2007.
Plain Dealer Columbus Bureau Chief Reginald Fields and Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens News Researcher JoEllen Corrigan contributed to this story. No sign of bottom yet in worst-hit sectors
Upcoming housing, factory, layoff data could be as bad as any, economists say
By Rex Nutting, MarketWatch
Last update: 10:08 a.m. EST Feb. 15, 2009
Comments: 47
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — You know things are bad Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens when the best economic news over the coming week is likely to be a report showing that consumers paid higher prices for goods and services.
Any hopes that the economy is beginning to bottom will probably be quashed by the data due in the coming week, which are likely to show further worsening in the housing industry, manufacturing and employment, economists say.
The most meaningful news could come at mid-week, when President Barack Obama outlines his government’s plans to reduce home foreclosures, and possibly in the process, put a Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens floor under the economy.
As for the regularly scheduled releases for the week, “the data flow suggests no let-up in the recession,” wrote Ethan Harris, co-head of domestic economics for Barclays Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens Capital.
“Economic releases will be generally tilted on the downside,” agreed Brian Bethune and Nigel Gault, U.S. economists for IHS Global Insight.
The major releases — housing starts, industrial Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens production and jobless claims — should be as bad as any in the past 25 years.
Housing
The home building industry is still collapsing, Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens according to two major indicators. Home builders are still as pessimistic as ever. Construction on new homes has fallen to the lowest levels since just after World War II, and is likely to weaken further in January, economists said.
After falling to a record-low of 550,000 annualized in Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens December, housing starts are expected to fall another 5% to 525,000 in January, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by MarketWatch. The figures will be released on Wednesday. Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens See Economic Calendar.
On Tuesday, the National Association of Home Builders will release its monthly sentiment survey, which has fallen to record low levels, with fewer than one in 10 builders Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens confident about the business.
A couple of economists are looking for an increase in housing Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens starts because they think the reported 44% decline in starts of apartments and condos over the past three months overstates the reality.
However, “we do not believe there has been any Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens fundamental improvement in the housing market,” said Peter D’Antonio, an economist for Citigroup Global Markets.
Builders are trying to reduce the supply of new homes, but can’t seem to stay ahead of the glut of older homes coming on the market because of foreclosures.
Some of the major lenders have announced they’ll Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens forgo any foreclosures for the next month or so to give the government a chance to a plan in place to prevent some of the millions of foreclosures still expected. See full story on foreclosure moratorium.
Manufacturing
Industrial production is expected to have plunged Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens again in January after falling 7% in the past six months. The automakers essentially took half the month off, and assemblies of new vehicles probably skidded to the lowest level in 32 years, according to Global Insight.
Economists surveyed by MarketWatch were looking for a decline of 1.7%, following a 2% drop in December. The figures will be released Wednesday.
It will “only get worse over the coming months as the global recession squeezes demand both at home and abroad,” wrote Meny Grauman, an economist for CIBC World Markets.
Total hours worked in the manufacturing sector is seen Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens falling 2.1% in January, with the number of jobs down in almost every industrial sector.
The capacity utilization rate in the factory sector probably fell to the lowest level since 1982, and close to the lowest ever in the 60-year history of the industrial Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens production report, said Citigroup’s D’Antonio.
No sign of bottom yet in worst-hit sectors
Layoffs
The weekly jobless claims figures should Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens command slightly more attention than usual, with the report covering the same week that the Bureau of Labor Statistics canvasses hundreds of thousands of households and businesses for its monthly employment report for February.
MarketWatch doesn’t survey economists for their predictions of the claims data, but continuing claims have been at record high levels — at nearly 5 million — Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens while initial claims have settled above 600,000 per week.
Inflation
Energy prices have stopped falling, which Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens means the consumer price index and the producer price index could show increases for the first time in months.
The CPI is expected to rise 0.3%, and the PPI 0.4%, according to economists.
Core inflation — which looks at the underlying inflation rate by stripping out food and energy prices — should be relatively tame, rising just 0.1% for both the core CPI and core PPI, the survey says.
Consumer prices in January were likely 0.1% lower than they were a year before, the first year-over-year decline since 1955. Core prices haven’t fallen, but the increases have been slowing.
“We project that the core inflation rate will slip below 1% this year, with a considerable risk that the rate will approach zero,” D’Antonio wrote.
The Federal Reserve has warned it sees a risk of Freehold NJ Foreclosures lis pendens near-term deflation, but there’s not much more they can do about that risk. The danger in the medium- and longer-term, of course, is that massive increases in the money supply and in the federal deficit will be inflationary.
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