North Carolina Year-over-Year Repo Home Lists Improve
Considering that the first half of the year did not bode well for the national foreclosure situation, the number of properties in North Carolina home auction lists declined compared to that of the previous year.
There was a considerable 26 percent drop from the last half of 2008, with only 12,000 homes entering some stage of foreclosure from January to June this year. Industry experts believe that the drop can be attributed to the efforts made by the federal government as well as non-profit organizations to encourage lenders to enter into a refinancing or loan modification agreement with troubled borrowers. For this reason, a lot of homeowners managed to prevent their homes from ending up in repo home lists.
Unfortunately, there was an increase in the number of homeowners who lost their houses to foreclosure for the period of May to June. According to Roy Cooper, North Carolina Attorney General, the spike could be due to lenders starting to refuse any form of negotiation with the distressed homeowners. In fact, there was a research that showed more than 50 percent of foreclosure-related cases where the lenders and borrowers did not communicate.
To address this, a legislation called Consumer Economic Protection Act will literally force communication between lenders and distressed homeowners. Based on the new law, extension of the foreclosure process is even possible if the mortgage lender failed to prove that they have shown any effort to assist borrowers. For cooper, the legislation is actually protecting both lenders and borrowers. Lenders will have a chance to recover their losses while homes of borrowers do not end up in repo home lists.
In addition to the lenders and distressed homeowners, the community and the economy will also come out as winners. As everyone knows, home values in neighborhoods blighted by numerous foreclosure properties suffer in terms of home values.
With the North Carolina bankers Association becoming a member of the Bankers Association, which advocates for lenders to help out borrowers, it is likely that the process of keeping people inside their houses and away from repo home lists will be improved.
To date, the new legislation has been given the thumbs up by the Senate and is on its way to the governor’s office for final approval.
