TWO MARYLAND COUNTIES FEELING THE SURGE OF HOME FORECLOSURES
Montgomery Homeowners Face Surge in Foreclosures
By Ovetta Wiggins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
More than 700 homes were in foreclosure in Montgomery County between April and June of this year, up from 49 during the same period last year, said Maryland Labor Secretary Tom Perez, offering a sobering picture yesterday of how the surge in foreclosures is affecting the affluent county.
"The foreclosure bug has infected Montgomery County, and it is time to apply some medicine to cure the problem," Perez said.
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County officials are teaming up with the state to provide advice and assistance to home buyers on mortgages and refinancing.
"An informed consumer is a better-protected consumer, so we want to ensure that our new-home buyers and those homeowners who may be refinancing are protected to the greatest extent possible," County Executive Isiah Leggett (D) said yesterday.
Leggett joined Perez at a news conference in Rockville to discuss the rising tide of foreclosures in Maryland, and more specifically in Montgomery, and the measures the state is taking to help counties deal with the problem.
Perez said a task force was formed recently to come up with a plan to educate people about homeownership, including ways to avoid foreclosure, and to assist homeowners in jeopardy of losing their homes. The task force will also review existing laws and regulations to determine whether they need to be reformed and make recommendations to Gov. Martin O'Malley (D).
"Governor O'Malley has outlined a plan for the new Maryland Homeownership Preservation Task Force that will move Maryland forward as a leader in foreclosure prevention," Perez said. He added that his Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation and other state agencies will also work with local governments, industry representatives and community groups to help Maryland consumers navigate the sometimes-confusing world of mortgage products and help them learn where to turn for help if they are victims of a scam.
Maryland's foreclosure ranking jumped from 40th in the nation last year to 18th in June, according to Perez.
PRINCE GEORGE'S COUNTY HAS 2300 FORECLOSURES IN PROCESS
Overall, Maryland is one of the wealthiest States of the union, so if the foreclosure rate in Montgomery County has increased fourteen times over last year, that has to represent something extremely serious for local government. Combining the foreclosures in process there with the Prince George's County numbers means that 3000 homes are now in severe distress, financially, and that will act to depress prices for those homes for sale in the same area. This will make it problematic for home owners who want to sell to find a price they can accept, while making home buyers with solid financing into a much-demanded market-group. Perhaps the overall situation in Maryland cannot yet be described as dire, but for the homeowner who is facing the imminent loss of the primary residence, it is indeed DIRE. Given that most homes are single-family in nature, and that most homeowners do have families, that would indicate that some 11,000 to 12,000 men, women and children are facing a most dire loss of their main investment, their residence.
This is bad news for the former Republican majority in Congress and for those Democratic Senators who voted to approve the revised Bankruptcy Law signed by George W. Bush. It is in many ways one of the most punitive measures ever enacted in modern times. This in turn will gin up a new batch of hatred and disgust. That means that the middle and upper-middle class families who are losing their homes in these affluent counties will become radicalized in an entirely unpredictable way.
Remember this, valued Readers -- revolutions are not started by the poor or by the suffering working man -- revolutions are started by what can be called the middle class or the middle element in any society, when they find their livelihoods being sabotaged and their properties seized or foreclosed upon. They will stop giving to their charities and foundations and they will start looking to exact revenge for the outrages committed against them by ... whomever it is that has violated their trust and their faith in the overall system.
And that won't be the working class or the "urban poor".
Copy and paste this link to check on foreclosure laws in any State:
http://www.foreclosures.com/pages/state_laws.asp
And finally, it's no wonder that Maryland has some of the most restrictive gun ownership laws in the whole country:
somebody knew this financial crisis was coming, or so it seems ....
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