Charotte Observer Update Reports
Foreclosures lead to vacancies and crime - Loan defaults a growing burden for lower-income neighborhoods - Easy home buy turns risky - Foreclosure filings reach record high in N.C. - Real estate agency took bonuses from builders it vowed to fight - Concord subdivision proves lucrative for builder and costly for 1st-time owners - Easy-credit loans can be hard on us all - Observer series shows destabilizing threat to entire communities

Five-Year Mortgage Rate Freeze Looms
The Bush administration has hammered out an agreement to freeze interest rates for certain subprime mortgages for five years to combat a soaring tide of foreclosures, congressional aides said Wednesday. The aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the details have not yet been released, said the five-year moratorium represented a compromise between desires by banking regulators for a longer time frame of up to seven years and mortgage industry arguments that the freeze should last only one or two years.

Report: lenders agree to five-year freeze on ARM loans
A coalition of lenders, loan servicers and investors have reportedly agreed to a plan that would freeze interest rates on some subprime mortgage loans for five years. Borrowers with loans made between Jan. 1,  2005, through July 30 of this year who face interest rate resets between Jan. 1, 2008, and July 31, 2010, would be eligible for interest rate freeze...

Foreclosure swallows new subdivisions before opening
The white paint has barely dried on the cathedral ceilings. And some of the stacked-stone chimneys have yet to crackle with that first fire. Here, in a half-built neighborhood near Grayson, everything is freshly minted, down to the suburban dreams. Yet earlier this month, outside the Gwinnett County courthouse, nearly half the subdivision was auctioned off — the latest casualty of a foreclosure crisis that has pounded model-home sales offices around metro Atlanta.

Stockton, Calif., Worst Off In 3rd Quarter Look At 100 Metropolitan Areas
Homeowners across the U.S. are increasingly having trouble making their mortgage payments on time, but borrowers in metro areas of California, Florida and other once-booming housing markets are accounting for the biggest spikes in foreclosure filings, according to a mortgage research company.   An analysis of foreclosure activity in the nation's largest 100 metropolitan areas during the three months ended Sept. 30 shows seven cities in California and five each in Florida and Ohio were among the top 25 metro areas with the highest foreclosure rates, according to the study being released Wednesday by RealtyTrac Inc.

Jacksonville has third highest foreclosure rate in the U.S.
The housing bust is getting worse. Right now, Jacksonville has the third highest foreclosure rate in the country with one in every 156 homes foreclosing. And there's a story behind everyone of them like one family of eight who could be living on the streets in a matter of weeks.

Bexar has most foreclosed properties since 1990
Thanks to easy lending standards that gave no-money-down loans to people with questionable credit histories, higher foreclosures likely will be an unwelcome houseguest in Texas for a few years. The foreclosures mostly are hitting those who made small or nonexistent down payments on their homes, and who likely are first-time home buyers. "This is the most we've had since the savings and loan crisis," said Gregg Stanley, owner of Real Estate Foreclosures, a San Antonio-based foreclosure tracking service. Stanley said loose mortgage lending practices and adjustable-rate mortgages resetting to higher — more unaffordable — rates are to blame.

Figures indicate foreclosures likely to increase for Houston homeowners
Area homeowners are increasingly having trouble making their mortgage payments, signaling foreclosures will likely continue to mount. In the Houston area, 4.38 percent of loans were 30 or more days late during the first quarter of 2007, compared with 2.04 percent during the same period last year, according to data provided by Moody's Economy.com...Foreclosures shot up to 11,983 in 2006 from 8,300 in 2004, in Harris, Montgomery and Fort Bend counties. The Houston-Sugar Land-Baytown area ranked fourth behind the Detroit, Miami and Riverside, Calif., metro areas in terms of delinquencies of 30 days or more.

Losing their house in 2005 still haunts Rockford couple
Foreclosures increased 38 percent between 2005 and 2006 in Boone Winnebago and Ogle counties, from 661 to 912, according to county records. Put another way: 7,190 homes and condominiums sold in the Rock River Valley in 2006, meaning it’s possible nearly 13 percent sold because the owner no longer could afford the home.The foreclosure epidemic is not just a local problem. The North Carolina-based Center for Responsible Lending estimated that more than 2 million “subprime” borrowers will lose their homes to foreclosure by the end of 2007. Subprime borrowers are like Clarice and Anthony: people with less-than-perfect credit histories filled with bankruptcies or accounts taken to collection.

Foreclosure's Shadow Falls Across Diverse Set of Homeowners
Now each faces the possibility of foreclosure. They share a common American dream of homeownership, but what's equally notable is their diversity. Their cases hint at the wide range of people who make up the group called "subprime" borrowers, who are now being hit hardest by a nationwide real estate slump. They are white as well as black, old as well as young, and middle-income as well as low-income. As the name subprime implies, these loans aren't for the Rockefellers, but for people with rocky credit records. Yet this category of loans saw an unprecedented wave of expansion since 2002, encompassing millions of Americans.