Well, according to Sojourners, on average the figure is one American family every 13 seconds (that's 6,600 per day).
This is not due to the subprime issue caused by unbridled speculation making life too expensive for people who had just been able to afford their mortgages. No, that was all two years ago.
So what is causing this new wave of foreclosures? Apparently, it is due to Americans losing employment. As the unemployment rate has climbed and climbed (and looks set to continue climbing, in spite of the temporary improvement just recently), an increasing number of Americans are losing their homes. Apparently, 50% of American homeowners have so little saved that if they are likely to lose their homes if they are out of work for as little as one month.
Savings rates are improving in the US, but not improving so very much yet. Meanwhile, the more Americans turn to saving, and the less they spend, the more it will hurt the export-oriented economies, led by China.
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Thursday, December 17, 2009
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I am an American who lost our home due to foreclosure. My husband changed jobs to a job with a lower salary but which offered health insurance for our family of four and a two week paid vacation. Previously, he had earned slightly more but had neither of these benefits. Additionally, the job was very demanding and stressful. The new job, with a German company, was much more 'worker friendly.' This worked well for my husband, who is Italian and who was raised in Switzerland. We put $30,000 of our savings into the house. Everyone told us that here in the states, your house is your savings, it is your security. Unfortunately, because of the job change we were rapidly accumulating debt affording the mortgage payments. We could not sell the house because of the dismal market. We would have had to pay around $50,000 to the bank in order to sell it and make up the difference of what we owed. In the end, we decided to foreclose.
I thought you might be interested in a real life experience of someone who has foreclosed. It's a little different froom the ones in a lot of magazines because it isn't related to changing interest rates or a medical emergency of some kind. I think there are more people like us than people realize. It's difficult to share because it is a morally complicated decision. We backed out of an agreement we made with the bank ultimately because we made a decision to change jobs. But in doing so we got healthcare for our kids! Ideally, we would have sold the house and moved to one we could afford.
Anyway, I'm new to your blog and I'm enjoying it!
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