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By Loren BerlinFive years in, the nation is less than halfway through its foreclosure crisis, the nonpartisan Center for Responsible Lending warned in a report released Thursday.
"For people that think we're out of the woods, they need to kind of rethink that premise," said Roberto Quercia, director of the Center for Community Capital at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and one of the study's authors.
Roughly 42.2 million Americans took out a mortgage loan between 2004 and 2008. By February of this year, 2.7 million of those households, or 6.4 percent, had lost their home to foreclosure. CRL estimates that an additional 3.6 million households, or 8.3 percent, are at "immediate, serious risk" of losing their homes.
And that estimate is probably low-balling the problem, the researchers said: CRL's research only extends through February 2011, and it excludes both the loans originated outside the given time-frame and loans that are not yet seriously delinquent.
What exactly is pushing homeowners to the brink? Researchers found that the type of mortgage a borrower has can have a greater impact on the borrower's ability to stay in their home than even income or credit history.
Read the full story at The Huffington Post.
Also see:
Feds Target Loan Mod Scams, With Google's Cooperation
Budding Trend: Foreclosed Homes Converted to Pot Gardens
Vacant House Targeted by Squatters, Scammers and Thieves
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