Mr Mortgage is back, and sees soaring foreclosures coming

It's not over yet. We had a fake 6-month reprieve on foreclosures imposed by law starting in September. Now the delayed defaults are hitting the books again with a vengeance, compounded by record job losses, low confidence in employment security, and drastic plunge in home values the last four months (check out zillow.com estimates).

Good graphics in the article. Too bad ATS now makes it difficult to show those.

www.fieldcheckgroup.com...

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 | By Mr. Mortgage
Foreclosures About to Soar Near-Term — Easily Back to All-Time Highs

Are you ready to see the future? Ten’s of thousands of foreclosures are only 1-5 months away from hitting that will take total foreclosure counts back to all-time highs. This will flood an already beaten-bloody real estate market with even more supply just in time for the Spring/Summer home selling season - great timing!

For months prior to March, banks/servicers were on and off of foreclosure moratoria with many on a complete hold awaiting Pres. Obama’s plan to save the housing market and homeowners. We track each foreclosure start through the entire foreclosure process individually and in aggregate — also by originator and servicer — and as soon as the Obama plan was made known, banks/servicers shifted their Notice-of-Default and Notice-of-Trustee Sale machines into overdrive.

Foreclosure start (NOD) and Trustee Sale (NTS) notices are going out at levels not seen since mid 2008. Once an NTS goes out, the property is taken to the courthouse and auctioned within 21-45 days.

...
The bottom line is that there is a massive wave of actual foreclosures that will hit beginning in April that can’t be stopped without a national moratorium — this wave is so big I would not put it past them trying it.

CA foreclosure background - in mid-2008 the foreclosure wave was building was artificially held back as a result of the CA law SB1137 enacted in Sept 2008. This also kept NOD’s and NTS’s at much lower levels than the actual defaults that were occurring. Other bubble states and several banks/servicers also went on random moratoria and the foreclosure wave was held back for the past six months. But just like so many other intervention and moratoria in the past, the problem just comes out the other side even more violent than if they would have done nothing. Adding insult to injury, the GSE’s announced this week that they were coming off moratorium, which could increase foreclosures by 20-25% alone.

The headlines in the near future will read:

•Circa April 12th - “March Foreclosures Drop Sharply but Foreclosure Starts at Record Highs”
•Circa May 12th- “April Foreclosures Surge 200% and Foreclosure Starts Remain at Record Highs”
Two months from now, the foreclosure crisis will be top of the news once again catching everyone off guard because of the past six months ‘intervention’. Thanks Washington.
...

[edit on 11-4-2009 by Dbriefed]

Looks like other media sources are starting to pick this up.

Residential real estate foreclosures skyrocket, spending declines, stores close, layoffs increase, commercial real estate plummets, increased bank toxic assets, residential real estate declines, the cycle continues.

All this stuff they're doing to soften the landing as they see a 'glimmer of hope'? All in preparation for worse things to come.