Help for Homeowners Facing Foreclosure

November 20, 2008

Everyone seems to agree that flooding the market with empty, foreclosed homes does not help neighborhoods maintain stability – either as a way of living, or regarding the value of homes. Empty homes do nothing for a neighborhood.

Recently some organizations are taking tentative steps to allow homeowners who are defaulting on their mortgage to remain in their homes –at least for the time being.

Fannie and Freddie Mac have announced that they are freezing foreclosure sales until after the new year while they review strategies and the future of their organizations. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. recently announced foreclosure-prevention programs that aim to reduce interest rates, extend repayment schedules and, in the case of Citigroup, reduce loan amounts, to help borrowers keep their homes. But the programs have focused primarily on loans wholly owned by those companies because they feel they have more authority to rework those mortgages.

HSBC is also making more options available to more people. For example, it is contacting customers before their adjustable-rate loans reset to higher rates and freezing the current rate or allowing the borrower to pay a rate below what the new rate would be. The bank also is lowering fixed rates for selected borrowers. All this in an effort to stave of foreclosures.

One way of stabilizing markets where supply exceeds demand is to regulate supply. That way the people who can buy homes can buy from sellers who can’t afford to stay in their current home. But, amazingly enough, new home construction is still going on – even in saturated markets. Merrill Lynch economist David Rosenberg suggests, only half-jokingly, that the Treasury should impose a moratorium on home building. "It sounds like lunacy, but we have to destroy the housing capital stock to help put a floor under the market," he said.

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Local Information for Elizabethtown, PA

Latitude: 40.153207 -- Longitude: -76.600431

Other Area Cities: Elizabethtown Camp Hill Colonial Park Middletown

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Elizabethtown is a borough in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, 21 miles southeast of Harrisburg. Small factories had existed there at the turn of the century when the population in 1900 was 1,861. In 1910, 1,970 people lived in Elizabethtown. As of the 2000 census, the population of the borough is 11,887. Elizabethtown is almost always referred to by persons living in south-central Pennsylvania as "E-Town." This nickname also follows through to the local college and high school. There are two stories about the origin of the town's name. In one version it is named after Elizabeth Reeby, wife of Michael Reeby who sold the first building lots here in about 1795. Another version has it named after the wife of Captain Barnabas Hughes who purchased a tavern here in 1750. The officially accepted history is that, in 1753, Barnabus Hughes acquired land and laid out a town, naming it for his wife, Elizabeth. The early settlers were primarily Scots-Irish and Pennsylvania Dutch. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

Pennsylvania 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Elizabethtown	Pennsylvania	United States
Population	11,887	12,281,054	281,421,906
Median age	33.6	38	35.3
Median age for Male	32.7	36.5	34
Median age for Female	34.4	39.4	36.5
Households	4,271	4,777,003	105,480,101
Household population	9,867	11,847,753	273,643,273
Average household size	2.31	2.48	2.59
Families	2,704	3,208,388	71,787,347
Average family size	2.88	3.04	3.14
Housing units	4,483	5,249,750	115,904,641
Occupied units	4,271	4,777,003	105,480,101
Vacant units	212	472,747	10,424,540

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