One of the most valuable tools I have found on the Internet to help real estate investors and real estate brokers is http://www.foreclosureradar.com
I have found that the information on the website is very accurate and informational regarding the past and current distressed real estate market. I personally signed up as a member within 15-30 minutes of my first time on the site. Please read some of the information provided in a recent email they sent me last week explaining much of the foreclosure crisis.
Foreclosure Crisis Milestones
February 2005 – Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan tells the US House Financial Services Committes that: “I don’t expect that we will run into anything resembling a collapsing [housing] bubble.”
February 2006 – Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says, “Our expectation is that the decline in activity or the slowing in activity will be moderate, that house prices will probably continue to rise, but not at the pace that they had been rising.”
May 2007 – Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says, “We do not expect significant spillovers from the subprime market to the rest of the economy or to the financial system.”
July 2008 – The Housing Economic Recovery Act is signed into law. Clearly too little, too late.
September 2008 – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are put into conservatorship by the US Treasury as concerns about their ability to raise capital and debt threaten to disrupt the US housing and financial markets.
September 2008 – Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson announces the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP). Though in the end troubled assets were largely purchased by the Fed rather than through TARP, it signaled the beginning of significant government intervention into the foreclosure market.
September 2008 – CA Senate Bill 1137 goes into affect. While intended to slow foreclosures and increase loan modifications, it accomplished little more than foreclosure delays.
February 2009 – The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act offers tax credit for first-time homebuyers, which is later extended to April 2010 and expanded to include repeat buyers. Like cash-for-clunkers it provides short-term stimulus to the housing market.
March 2009 – Obama Administration announces “Making Home Affordable” loan modification program (HAMP), creating the most exotic mortgage ever offered, and lawmakers request a voluntary foreclosure moratorium pending implementation.
April 2009 – Financial Accounting Standards Board approves mark-to-model for mortgage-backed securities creating incentives for lenders to sit on bad loans rather than foreclose or approve short sales or loan modifications.
May 2009 – The “Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009″ provides renters impacted by foreclosure with additional protections.
December 2009 – Nationwide campaign to push the The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) continues an artificial delay of foreclosures, but ultimately helps only a few.
April 2010 – Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) promotes short sales and deeds-in-lieu of foreclosure, but has little impact beyond delaying the inevitable.
October 2010 – Robo-signing scandal over documentation issues in judicial foreclosure filings leads to nationwide delays in foreclosure sales.
Stockton Area Real Estate – Dave Thurman
