Maryland is getting a second dose of the housing crisis -- a sequel that foreclosure experts and state officials knew was coming but no one wanted to see.Between January and June, Maryland went from having one of the lowest foreclosure rates in the nation to the third highest as banks worked their way through a backlog of delinquent loans, created in part by the state's long foreclosure process.
Live Free! For a while. In Maryland.
All the while, the backlog of troubled loans grew, mainly in states such as Maryland, where courts approve foreclosures and the process takes much longer. Lawmakers in Annapolis also passed a series of reforms to help homeowners try to save their homes, which made the foreclosure timeline even longer. Once among the shortest in the nation, Maryland's is now among the longest: an average of 575 days as of June, according to foreclosure-tracking firm RealtyTrac. In Virginia, where court approval for foreclosures is not required, it takes 184 days, the shortest of any state.
Home prices have gone up in her neighborhood, but not enough to help the Adegbuyis, who bought their house in 2005 for $583,000. In January, the county assessed it at $332,900, tax records show.
She and her husband began negotiating with her bank in 2008, after she was laid off from her workforce development job. That was the start of a five-year stint in paperwork purgatory that she said continues. The couple started to fall seriously behind on their mortgage after her husband was laid off in 2011.
Welcome to the New O-Conomy! Get a green job! Move to California! Solyndra is hiring, aren't they?
Adegbuyi went to a June meeting of the Prince George's County Foreclosure Task Force, which reviews the county's response to foreclosures and proposes policies. She left frustrated with the task force's focus on housing counseling, down-payment assistance, and rehabbing vacant foreclosures. The county seems more focused on helping new people come in, she said. "What about the people trying to stay in their homes?"
Stay in your home? Without employment? We need to work on a program for that! If only the evil re-thuglicans would raise taxes on the very wealthy, we could save these folks!
At the current rate, it will take 18 months for the backlog of foreclosures to clear, state policy analyst Flora M. Arabo said. While that is longer than officials would like, buying more time for struggling homeowners is worth it, she said.
After all, the banks have plenty of money. We bailed them out once, didn't we?