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 Rome, NY

Latitude: 43.219469 -- Longitude: -75.46333

Other Area Cities: Rome North Bay Shore

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Rome is a city in Oneida County, New York, United States. The population was 34,950 at the 2000 census. It is in New York's 24th Congressional District. The city is named after Rome, Italy. It is sometimes nicknamed "The Copper City" on account of the brass and copper works founded by Paul Revere in 1801. The City of Rome is in the south-central part of the county. The Rome Sand Plains is a 15,000-acre inland pine barrens within the city, that consists of a mosaic of high sand dunes and low peat bogs, mixed northern hardwood forests, meadows and wetlands. It is one of only a handful of inland pine barrens remaining in the United States. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

New York 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Rome	New York	United States
Population	34,950	18,976,457	281,421,906
Median age	38.2	35.9	35.3
Median age for Male	36.1	34.5	34
Median age for Female	41	37.2	36.5
Households	13,653	7,056,860	105,480,101
Household population	31,452	18,395,996	273,643,273
Average household size	2.3	2.61	2.59
Families	8,332	4,639,387	71,787,347
Average family size	2.93	3.22	3.14
Housing units	16,272	7,679,307	115,904,641
Occupied units	13,653	7,056,860	105,480,101
Vacant units	2,619	622,447	10,424,540

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