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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Geoff Altman who wrote (50773)	10/8/2008 5:56:25 PM
From: cirrus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 224729

FWIW: PITTSBURGH (KDKA Foreclosures in middle and upper middle class neighborhoods are taking off. In fact if you take a drive down an upper middle class town like Hampton Township -- you might be surprised that banks and lenders foreclosed on some 30 homes last year -- up from two just seven years ago - proof positive that the foreclosure crisis is hitting the well-to-do as well as the working class. "It's hitting people of all professions and backgrounds," says Dan Murrer of RealSTATs, who complied a list of foreclosures in 32 well-to-do towns and neighborhoods. He found a startling jump from 180 foreclosures in 2000 to 558 in 2007 -- a 210 percent increase -- showing that the crisis is expanding beyond subprime loans in poorer places. "The fact that foreclosures are increasing in these middle-class neighborhoods is indicating that the 'average Joe' with a standard mortgage is the one who's getting foreclosed on," Murrer says. In Ross -- foreclosures jumped from 5 in 2000 to 38 last year. In Hampton from 2 to 30. Those towns were the rule rather than the exception. Bethel Park went from 12 to 38 and Mt. Lebanon from 10 to 25. In the west, Moon Township went from 8 to 27, and in the east, Plum Boro went from 12 to 35. "I think that you can chalk it up to greed," says Ray Dietz, of Allstate Financial who attributes the growing number of middle class foreclosures to greed on both sides -- the buyers who wanted bigger homes and the lenders who didn't even require proof of income to give them a mortgage. "It's a two-way street. You've got the greed of the borrower who's trying to buy a home they cannot afford, hoping that the home's going to continue to appreciate and move up in value and you have the greed of the lender who is purchasing the mortgages at the end saying, 'I will waive sound lending practices in order to make a larger profit.' " But others say that even people who could once afford their mortgages are now in danger of losing their homes -- put on the edge by loss of a job, sickness or just the increasingly high cost of living. Says Murrer: "With costs going up, fuel, milk -- all the staples - we could expect it to get worse." kdka.com