December 10, 2007 (LPAC)--With 580,000 foreclosure actions in the third quarter and then 224,000 in October alone, 'Ground Zero' of the foreclosures crisis is now everywhere, from "the nation's wealthiest county" Loudoun, Virginia, to depression-wracked Detroit. Because Nancy Pelosi's and Barney Frank's House of Representatives has taken no action to stop the foreclosure wave--and no Senate committee has even reported out a mortgage crisis bill--highly paid professionals and unemployed industrial workers are being foreclosed alike, on prime, subprime, and ARM mortgages, with nothing but escalation of the social crisis in sight. This shows in new reports from Virginia, Kentucky, and Michigan.
Loudoun County, Washington, D.C.'s "speculation suburb" with the nation's highest household income, now has one in every 46 households in foreclosure, according to a report from George Mason University reported front-page in today's Washington Post. Median home prices in the 'Housing Bubble Ground Zero' have fallen a dramatic 16% from October 2006 to October 2007, says the county realtors' association. The Post story details cases of professionals--including realtors!--losing their dwellings; in some cases losing both the home they live in, and another one they speculated on, due to high-interest ARM mortgages they could not refinance because of the price drop.
Nearby Capital suburb Prince William County, Virginia, characterized by "starter homes" in the $200,000-300,000 range when bought, has an even worse rate, one out of 38 homes in foreclosure.
In metropolitan Louisville, Kentucky, an EIR interview Dec. 7 with the head of the housing coalition, revealed that foreclosures there have doubled in two years (to 3,400, one in every 54 households in the capital area), primarily due to too-high mortgage interest rates. They have shifted dramatically to the suburbs; the top four neighborhoods for foreclosures are suburban, predominantly white districts, where more than 10% of foreclosures are on prime mortgage loans. In an in-depth study of 26 foreclosed households, a "startling" 14, from all areas and incomes, reported a hidden form of mortgage fraud which made their loans seem smaller and more affordable than they were.
In Detroit, the Dec. 2 Sunday Free Press carried a grim 122 pages of 2007 home foreclosures, costing Wayne County $400,000 to publish it! (The publishing is a county legal requirement.) One-fourth of all Wayne County's 500,000 homeowners are in default on their mortgages, and 18,000 are in foreclosure, or one in every 28.
