A comprehensive foreclosure report released today by Policy Matters Ohio lays to rest any notion that Ohio’s foreclosure crisis is waning.
February 15, 2011 – (RealEstateRama) — The report, “Home Insecurity: Foreclosure Growth in Ohio, 2011,” analyzes foreclosure filings and housing trends among Ohio counties and finds that despite a slight reduction foreclosures in 2010 compared to 2009, the 85,483 foreclosures recorded in 2010 remains a dangerously high number. “The growing number of delinquent mortgages and homes with negative equity is simply unsustainable,” said David Rothstein, Policy Matters researcher and author of the report.
Ohio will likely fare worse this year than last and might even top 2009 record numbers, said Bill Faith, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO). “The report illustrates how the decrease in foreclosures at the end of 2010 was directly tied to the self-imposed moratoria by the nation’s largest banks brought on by their own ‘robo-signing’ debacle,” said Faith. “This does not mean the beginning of the end of foreclosures. It’s a temporary blip and a slight reprieve, but this crisis is nowhere near over.”
The latest numbers indicate that there was one foreclosure filing for every 59 housing units in the state last year. All of the top ten counties in foreclosure-filing growth had populations under100,000 people. Nearly one-third of Ohio mortgage holders are “under water,” owing more than their houses are worth, and one in every six homeowners is either behind on their payments or in foreclosure.
Faith said that he’s hopeful that non-profit counseling efforts, mediation programs and other state and federal programs like Ohio’s Restoring Stability Initiative and the federal HAMP program will begin to chip away at the 15 year-old crisis. But he said that important business was left unfinished at the end of the last General Assembly – especially in the Senate, where legislation to regulate servicers and protect tenants sat idle for more than a year.
“We need to step up our policy efforts in ways that can have systemic changes and impact this crisis in a lasting way,” Faith said.
Contact:
Suzanne Gravette Acker
(614) 280-1984 ext. 11 Bill Faith
(614) 579-6108
