Hand To Handle Foreclosure

Posted in Foreclosure Homes, August 6th, 2008 |

HANDS was certified by the US government Department of Housing and Urban Development, to handle foreclosures. It will give counsel on mortgage properties just when the problem of foreclosure was sneaking into Warren County.
Mayor Elaine Walker confirmed that seven local banks were working with HANDS, to set up offices throughout the region, in 27 counties, Owensboro and Elizabethtown to help borrowers understand better their mortgage deals. They offered to counsel potential purchasers of houses even at the pre-mortgage stage. The local leaders in their effort to navigate borrowers, struggling under foreclosure or immersed in the midst of bigger problems, had come forward several months ago to counsel them and show them ways and means of wading out of it. The government officials, bankers, Realtors, AARP and Kentucky Housing Corporation had organized a program wherein much of the problems of the borrowers at risk of running into a foreclosure could be bailed out. Their policies were updated regularly.
The foreclosure crisis had touched Warren County but was not as bad as it was in the states of Florida, California or Michigan, nevertheless people were feeling the pinch. The whole year of 2007 saw 230 houses being foreclosed in Warren County but this year in July alone there had been 183 foreclosure filings and 25 more were slated for August, 2008. Deborah Williams, Executive Director of non-profit Housing Assistance and Development Services, anticipated that the total foreclosure figure at the end of the year was quite likely to exceed 300 households.
According to Williams many factors contributed to the present crisis in the housing finance industry. Since the late 1970’s the US had not witnessed a slump of this stature and was caught unawares. Suffering was rampant, people with low income, middle-class families with good incomes were suffocated under pressure of inflation, and higher fuel costs fanned prices so that even people with very good savings account and an organized budget were affected, and topping the problem was the foreclosure and sub-prime lending debacle.
Williams said that some funds had been procured to help out borrowers in several ways. First, it could reach out to areas to spread awareness among borrowers the status of their mortgage loans, counselors could negotiate a lower rate of interest especially if it was through a partner bank, it could offer financial help to borrowers who suddenly is retrenched or suffers a major illness. The borrowers were only to dial HANDS for help free of charge.