Boise, Idaho News, Weather and Traffic - KTRV Fox 12 - Foreclosures up in Ada County, Treasure Valley
Member Center:
Boise, Idaho -- Foreclosure rates are going up.
A recent report from Idaho Data Providers indicates in the Treasure Valley there were about 460 filings in September.
In October that number was easily surpassed, as 575 new foreclosures got underway.
Now one local realtor says there is a way to fix this, but it will take some extreme cooperation from Congress.
"We think that the keys to stabilizing our economy is to stabilize home prices and to reduce existing inventor," said Mark Lebowitz, Ada County Realtor's Association.
And it needs to be done fast says Lebowitz, hopefully during a lame duck session of Congress, because too many people are going into foreclosure.
"This isn't like the subprime garbage. These are normal people with good jobs," said Dean Wegner, a national mortgage specialist.
Foreclosures around the country are at an all-time high, but a recent report shows Treasure Valley foreclosures went up by nearly 23 percent last month, and in Ada County they increased by 34 percent.
Wegner says there are accounts of people falling on hard times everywhere.
"I know of people currently in hotels. I have seen them declined from landlords, lose jobs, lose their house, get kicked out of their house," said Werner.
To stop that from happening, Lebowitz has joined forces with a group of national realtors to push forward a lame duck session of Congress.
Their proposal to lawmakers includes four points:
First, make the $7,500 first-time home-buyer-tax credit available to all buyers and eliminate repayment requirements.
Also make the 2008 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loan limits permanent.
Third, bar banks from entering real estate brokerage or management.
And lastly, Lebowitz says a portion of that $700 billion bailout should be spent on a low interest rate buy down program -- insuring that more people can buy homes at locked-in below-market rates.
Lebowitz says this plan could reverse the affects of the overwhelming number of foreclosures.
"If we could use some part of the $700 billion federal economic rescue package to cause to be delivered to home buyers below market rates - each 1 percent that we could go below market would enable another 800,000 buyers," said Lebowitz.
He says it's important to remember, offering lower-than-market interest rates in this case would not be the same as what happened before the crisis began. Those were adjustable rate mortgages, or ARMS, that quickly increased, leaving many homeowners unable to make their house payments.
