Solving the Foreclosure Crisis

Not since the Great Depression of 1929 has America experienced such economic chaos, job and housing loss. Perhaps housing loss was not as wide-spread then since there were fewer homeowners. The government supposedly put in measures designed not to let those on Wall Street cause the same thing to happen again. Yet, here we are some eighty years later in the same situation. It seems that history keeps repeating itself. The question is why? The answer is greed. Unfortunately, the question "how can we stop it from happening again"? cannot be answered in one definitive statement. Of course the solution to preventing home foreclosures is "prevention," which in itself comes with a lot of variables.

Background Information

As of December 29, 2009, the website Foreclosure.com reported that over 2.2 million homes in the continental USA are in some form of foreclosure, 486,323 are in pre-foreclosure and 465,490 have already been foreclosed. Over seven hundred thousand have tax liens against them and 87, 389 have been sold in Sheriff sales. Along with the homeowners, mortgage companies and banks have suffered tremendous financial loss. However, the homeowners lost so much more; they not only lost the roof over their heads, but memories, their self-esteem and their piece of the American dream.

Disastrous Causes and Circumstances

Sometimes banks and mortgage companies allow people with good credit to purchase property priced higher than its appraised value. For example, a single female with a good job and good credit was allowed to pay over forty thousand dollars more than the appraised value of the house she bought. Two years later she lost her job and immediately refinanced her mortgage loan for a lower interest rate and payment. A ye...

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...those just barely getting by. The problem is, once the affluent get back on their feet they soon forget those they left behind and instead of helping them, they take advantage of them by charging them more for being poor.

Forgiving past due payments will give the homeowner a real sense of starting over without an enormous amount of debt hanging over their heads; they will be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel. The banks/mortgage companies have already written off the debt as a loss and foreclosing on the homeowner is not going to make them any more money. The Bible says, "What does it prophet a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul." In Biblical days, everyone's debt was forgiven the seventh year. Now the bankruptcy courts have taken that away by making it ten years before debt can be erased from the files of those who filed for relief.