HousingLink Blog

• Foreclosure Prevention Workshop For Unemployed

  2/12/2010 9:37:09 AM

  Our friends over at The Minnesota Home Ownership Center, the Community Action Partnership of Suburban Hennepin County and the Minnesota WorkForce Centers are working together to offer free workshops for homeowners who are worried about making upcoming mortgage payments, are already facing foreclosure or for anyone interested in learning more about the foreclosure process in Minnesota.
  
  The workshop will provide information on what happens during foreclosures, homeowners’ rights, and solutions for long-term housing needs. Participants will be able to ask questions and get free advice – confidentially - from local, non-profit foreclosure counselors.
  
  The first workshop in the series will be held on Thursday, February 18th at the Hennepin South WorkForce Center (Bloomington) from 10:30am to 12:00noon.
  
  For a map to the Hennepin South WorkForce Center, click here.
  
  For a press release of the upcoming workshop, click here.
  
  For a flyer you can freely distribute to help promote the workshop, click here.
  
  

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  Foreclosure MN Home Ownership Center Training

• How Do You Calculate Home Foreclosures?

  2/11/2010 11:47:22 AM

  An important question is being discussed in the media lately: "When you say a home is in foreclosure, what does that mean?" Minnesota Public Radio has been exploring this question. MPR recently reported that there seems to be a discrepancy between the foreclosure data that RealtyTrac produces and reports that are released by HousingLink and the MN Home Ownership Center.

  RealtyTrac has stated that foreclosures in Minnesota were up nearly 50% in 2009 while HousingLink and the MN Home Ownership Center claim that foreclosures took a slight decline in 2009, rather than a huge increase.

  Where's the difference?

  The discrepancies comes down to what you actually count as a "foreclosure". At HousingLink, we believe the most accurate way to calculate foreclosures is to look at sheriff's sales--the point at which a homeowner loses their home to the lender or third party real estate organization. RealtyTrac tally's up all the properties that are anywhere in the foreclosure process--from the first pre-foreclosure notice a homeowner receives to the actual sheriff's sale. Given that there are numerous ways for people to avoid a sheriff's sale along the path to foreclosure, we feel that calculating actual sheriff's sales give the most accurate picture of homes that have been foreclosed on. RealtyTrac feels otherwise.
  
  This debate will continue into the future. What do you think? Which method of calculating foreclosures seems to make the most sense to you?

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  Foreclosure MN Home Ownership Center RealtyTrac MPR

• Protecting Tenants During A Foreclosure.

  2/4/2010 11:03:01 AM

  Did you know that on May 20^th, 2009 the “Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act” was signed into law? Minnesota’s Rep. Keith Ellison helped pass this legislation. The bill requires landlords who are being foreclosed upon to give their tenants 90 days notice before they must move. It also holds the new purchaser of the property at the sheriff’s sale (either the lender or a private party buyer) to the prior terms of the lease.
  
  The provisions of this law are "self-executing", so no federal agency (such as HUD) is responsible for making them work.  It is up to advocates to make sure that tenants, landlords, public housing authorities, courts, the legal community, and others involved in the foreclosure process are aware of these new rights for tenants.
  
  So, if you are landlord who’s about to lose your property to foreclosure or a tenant living in a building that’s about to be foreclosed on, you need to be aware of this law. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has an excellent Foreclosure Toolkit on their website.
  

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  Tools Renter Foreclosure

• Foreclosures In MN Seen From Different Perspectives

  2/2/2010 9:42:44 AM

  Last week, Minnesota Public Radio reported a story noting that foreclosure figures for MN, as reported by RealtyTrac, don't seem to be consistent with foreclosure numbers HousingLink collects every year as part of the Foreclosure in MN reporting series. According to RealtyTrac, foreclosures were up nearly 60% from 2008, while as of Q3, HousingLink was reporting a 13% drop in foreclosures versus the previous year. Why the difference? Well, RealtyTrac gathers data from various points along the timeline – from notices of default when a homeowner is initially delinquent on the mortgage to documents indicating “real estate owned” (REO), when a lender has taken possession of a property. With this aggregation of multiple stages in the foreclosure process, the number more accurately reflects “mortgages in the process of foreclosure,” whereas the HousingLink number reflects scenarios in which a homeowner has exhausted or not availed themselves of other options, some six months after an initial missed payment, and finally lost their property at a county sheriff’s sale auction. HousingLink contacts the county sheriff offices, directly, in order to gather a complete inventory. RealtyTrac’s data comes primarily from lender filings, and is weighted more heavily toward more populous counties. Their “loans in REO status” is probably most similar to the data we collect, but it is not a perfect comparison. We should note that there are often options available to homeowners who are in this “process of foreclosure,” and looking for help. We recommend contacting the counselors at the MN Home Ownership Center for more information.

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  Foreclosure RealtyTrac MPR

• Federal Making Home Affordable Program Not Keeping Up

  1/20/2010 10:26:06 AM

  The Star Tribune recently reported on a trend we at HousingLink have been watching for awhile now. The federal Making Home Affordable Program has not been able to keep up with demand of people seeking mortgage adjustments.
  
  Alan Zibel writes that it, "appears only about 750,000 homeowners — a fraction of the 3 million to 4 million originally projected [nationwide] — might complete the application process...The more borrowers can't be helped, the more foreclosed properties will flood the market. And that means the nation's housing market, which appeared to recover last summer, could soon take another turn for the worse."
  
  Zibel goes on to note that nearly 3 million households are currently facing foreclosure while home prices remain down 30% from 2006.  So, if you could even find a buyer for your home, there's a good chance you would have to sell it at a loss.
  
  Recently the federal government released their latest “Servicer Performance Report” to track the “Making Home Affordable Program” and how it’s being administered. This report tells us that for MN there are approximately 15,000 loans currently in the “trial period,” while only 1,527 have been permanent adjusted. For a limited time, borrowers are being given a two-month extension onto the standard 3-month trial period. That extension ends at the end of the month. Unfortunately, many thousands of Minnesota households are counting on their modification being made permanent, but if it doesn't happen soon, they will reach the end of the trial period without a permanent solution.
  
  Let's hope that the majority of these loans can be permanently adjusted soon, or many people will be in a difficult situation. We will keep on top of this situation and let you know how things are going.
  

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  Research Foreclosure Federal Government Economy

• 1 In 73 MN Homeowners Received A Foreclosure Filing

  1/14/2010 10:52:43 AM

  The Minneapolis Star Tribune, using data from HousingLink and RealtyTrac, is reporting that foreclosure filings were up as a whole for 2009, but declined slightly in the fourth quarter. One in every seventy-three homeowners got some sort of foreclosure filing, "an increase of 56.3 percent over 2008 and 174.3 percent compared with 2007 and ranks Minnesota No. 20 out of 50 states in foreclosure filings," writes Kara McGuire for the Star Tribune. 
  
  Foreclosure filings peaked in the third quarter of 2009 and decreased slightly during the fourth quarter. (It's important to note that a foreclosure filing is not the same as losing your home to foreclosure. Some people receive a filing, but resolve the situation before their house is foreclosed on.)  However, this doesn't mean we are in the clear. Our Research Manager, Dan Hylton, states in this article, "If the unemployment rate stays high and some of those adjustable rate option arms reset, I don't see it necessarily getting better in 2010 and would fear that we'll see another spike." 
  
  So, the good news for now is foreclosure filings (and actual foreclosures) have started to decline, but we aren't out of the woods yet...things could get worse for 2010.  HousingLink will continue to monitor this situation as it plays out in Minnesota.

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  Research Foreclosure Star Tribne

• The Most Miserable City In The United States

  1/12/2010 2:09:00 PM

  We all know that the foreclosure crisis has hit every part of the country, but Minnesota has fared better than other states.  Associated Press writer Evelyn Nieves writes an interesting article about Stockton, California; a city dubbed "America's Most Miserable City".  Nieves writes, "The population of 290,400 is strapped. Up to two-thirds of homeowners owe more on their properties than the houses are now worth. Housing values have dropped more than 60 percent since the height of the boom four years ago, more than any other city."  Yikes! It must be heartbreaking to experience the economic troubles the residents of Stockton have had to endure.  Fortunately for us, no city in MN has seen this bad of a housing decline.
  

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  Downturn California Foreclosure Economy Crisis