Share your ideas for fixing foreclosure
Got an opinion on how to clean up the foreclosure mess?
Well, the government is listening.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency is soliciting ideas to get these pox on real estate off the market and into the hands of investors.
Deadline to submit proposals (in pdf format) to reo.rfi@fhfa.gov is Thursday.
The request comes as the nation labors through a fifth year of this debacle.
Foreclosures have torpedoed home values everywhere. In Shasta County, prices are about half of what they were in 2006, the year the market peaked.
Ironically, government programs aimed at helping distressed homeowners haven't helped much. Many argue they've caused more harm than good while prolonging the misery.
Some areas have launched drastic efforts to flush foreclosures faster through the pipeline.
They're eliminating them, literally.
In Ohio, according to Time magazine, local authorities are buying up dilapidated foreclosures, then razing their new investments in an attempt to stabilize the area's housing market, or more to the point, save the economy.
Twenty-two foreclosed homes will be knocked down by the wrecking ball over the next several months in the Cleveland suburb of Lakewood, Ohio. "We're not gonna miss these houses," Lakewood Mayor Mike Summers told Time.
Meanwhile, the federal government's request is focused on foreclosures owned by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration, which had a combined 92,000 listings nationwide in mid-July, including roughly 12,000 in California and 115 in Shasta County.
That's just listings.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac owned nearly 200,000 foreclosures in the United States in June, a number that includes properties under contract and those yet to be listed. Fannie and Freddie do not break it down by county.
Government officials want ideas that support growing the nation's rental and affordable housing market, but they're open to all proposals.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner believes coming up with new options for selling foreclosures will help renters, many of whom are the same families who have lost their home during the Great Recession.
The ultimate goal is to encourage more private investment in the foreclosure market, which would help stabilize neighborhoods and stop the declining values.
That's the hope.
- September 10, 2011
- 5:23 a.m.
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citizenactivist 
writes:
have first chance to purchase their home back
at the new price and payment that the short
sale investor and speculator is now being offered.