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 Spanish Fork, UT

Latitude: 40.104546 -- Longitude: -111.639954

Other Area Cities: Spanish Fork Mapleton Orem Provo Salem Springville Payson

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Spanish Fork was settled by Mormon pioneers in 1850. Its name derives from a visit to the area by two Franciscan Friars, Silvestre Vélez de Escalante and Francisco Atanasio Domínguez in 1776, who followed the stream down Spanish Fork canyon with the objective of opening a new trail from Santa Fe, New Mexico to the Spanish missions in California, along a route later followed by fur trappers. They described the area inhabited by native Americans as having "spreading meadows, where there is sufficient irrigable land for two good settlements. Over and above these finest of advantages, it has plenty of firewood and timber in the adjacent sierra which surrounds its many sheltered spots, waters, and pasturages, for raising cattle and sheep and horses."Between 1855 and 1860, the arrival of pioneers from Iceland made Spanish Fork into the first permanent Icelandic settlement in the United States. -- Source: Wikipedia.com

Utah 2000 Census Population Profile Map

	Spanish Fork	Utah	United States
Population	20,246	2,233,169	281,421,906
Median age	24.1	27.1	35.3
Median age for Male	23.7	26.7	34
Median age for Female	24.5	27.7	36.5
Households	5,534	701,281	105,480,101
Household population	19,846	2,192,689	273,643,273
Average household size	3.59	3.13	2.59
Families	4,777	535,294	71,787,347
Average family size	3.91	3.57	3.14
Housing units	5,808	768,594	115,904,641
Occupied units	5,534	701,281	105,480,101
Vacant units	274	67,313	10,424,540

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