Correction

»The recipe for Col. Blath's Hysteria-Suppressing Tonic in the May 29, 1858, posting contained an error. The serum requires one-third jigger of extract of henbane, not two-thirds. Martha's News regrets the error.

More Mansion Foreclosures

Houses costing more than $5 million will be part of the next foreclosure boom, according to a study by RealtyTrac.

In 2009, 1,312 homes costing more than $5 million faced foreclosure auctions. In February 2010 alone, 352 homes were on the auction block.

CoreLogic tracks 1,700 homes nationwide that have mortgages greater than $4 million. Of those, 14.8 percent were 90 days or more past due as of Jan. 31. That is almost double the 8.7 percent of homes with lesser mortgages that were similarly past due.

These pricey properties are difficult to sell because there are fewer buyers and financing is hard to get, but there’s a psychological element to the problem too. It's very, very difficult for these home owners to believe they've had such a severe reversal of fortune.

THIS - - - JUST - - - IN

Sports Announcers Increasingly Able To Believe What They're Seeing - - - -

US Housing Markets Facing Epic Hangover - Slow Recovery

The housing crash that helped bring on the worst recession since the Great Depression will linger in the nation's hardest-hit real estate markets until 2025 -- or later.  Nearly a full generation will pass before major metro areas in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada return to the solid ground reached at the height of the housing boom in 2006-2007. And it'll take a decade or more for other urban markets in the Northeast and industrial Midwest to likewise return to peak conditions.
 Even the start of a housing recovery in general is still a year away.

Nationally, data points to a further 7 percent decline in home prices through the end of this year, with a prolonged recovery beginning early in 2011.

The areas with the deepest price declines will face the longest recovery periods. Specifically:

Orlando, Fla., won't recover its average 59.9 percent drop in home prices until 2039.
Sacramento, Calif., will jog in place until 2039 to make up its 54.8 percent home price crash.
San Jose, Calif., won't recover from a 41.7 percent home price plunge until 2023.
Jacksonville, Fla.'s home price bust of 39.3 percent will keep that market below peak until 2020. Tucson, Ariz., also will have to wait until 2020 to rebound from a 36.8 home price plummet.

Several forces in the market will severely hinder the housing recoveries of many metro areas, particularly in the hard-hit states of California, Florida, Arizona and Nevada. It will take these markets 15 or more years before home prices climb back to their peaks.

Fiserv Case-Shiller

Latest stats not so pretty

According to the U.S. Census Bureau,as of 2008, there were 51,487,282 housing units with a mortgage of some type and 23,875,803 without a mortgage. About 4.5 million of the 51.5 million mortgages in the U.S. are "seriously delinquent" (90 days or more past due) and some 1.6 million are in the foreclosure pipeline.

The nation's foreclosure rate increased in January to 3.19%, up 60.3% from a year ago, while the rate for seriously delinquent mortgages increased to 8.66%, an increase of 56.6% from 12 months earlier. In March, the nation's foreclosure rate just hit a five-year high.

A recent report from Bank of America (BAC) stated that 1.44 million of its mortgage customers are 60 days or more delinquent, roughly 14% of the company's portfolio of 10.4 million first mortgages.

The median mortgage payment is about $1,300 per month and the number of delinquent loans is at least 4.5 million, it is straightforward to extrapolate that those not paying their mortgages are "saving" almost $6 billion a month.

Our numbers here in Florida ain't too purty neither. Our 90-day delinquency rate is 19.39%, which means one in every five mortgages in the state is in default.

Foreclosures: Biggest Jump in 5 years

A record number of U.S. homes were lost to foreclosure in the first three months of this year, a sign banks are starting to wade through the backlog of troubled home loans at a faster pace. The number of U.S. homes taken over by banks jumped 35 percent in the first quarter from a year ago. In addition, households facing foreclosure grew 16 percent in the same period and 7 percent from the last three months of 2009. More homes were taken over by banks and scheduled for a foreclosure sale than in any quarter going back to at least January 2005.

The United States is on pace to more than 1 million bank repossessions this year.

Nationwide, more than 900,000 households, or one in every 138 homes, received a foreclosure-related notice.

States with the highest foreclosure rates in the first quarter 2010:

Nevada one in every 33 homes received a foreclosure-related notice during the quarter.

Arizona one in every 49 homes.

Florida, one in every 57 properties.

California one in every 62 properties.

About 231,000 homeowners have completed loan modifications as part of the Obama administration's flagship foreclosure prevention program through March. That's about 21 percent of the 1.2 million borrowers who began the program over the past year. But another 158,000 homeowners who signed up have dropped out — either because they didn't make payments or failed to return the necessary documents. That's up from about 90,000 just a month earlier.

Last month, the administration expanded the program, launching a plan to reduce the amount some troubled borrowers owe on their home loans and give jobless homeowners a temporary break. But the details of those programs are expected to take months to work out.

Chase Fighting New Regulations

Why? Because the sweeping financial overhaul could force Chase and other banks to shed assets and become smaller institutions. The new regulations will also tighten the grip both state and federal regulators have over financial institutions, possibly even setting up a consumer protection agency with wide-ranging powers.

We're not talking about a moral issue, we're talking about reality. The big banks don't want to write down their losses until they absolutely have to. They would rather let homes go to foreclosure slowly -- collecting fees along the way -- than take a major writedown now. Never mind that most experts believe that principal reduction is the only solution to the foreclosure crisis.

At issue is the $448 billion in equity lines and other junior loans held primarily by the nation's four biggest banks. If principal writedown is allowed, most of the equity lines involved will be wiped out if the property is underwater. In fact, the plan Obama announced last week for owners of such homes allowed only 10 cents to 20 cents on the dollar for second-lien holders.

Right now second lienholders are holding up mortgage modifications for underwater homes. Yet mortgage experts clearly have determined that a borrower whose mortgage is more than 115 percent underwater will likely walk away from the home. If the borrower walks away, the first lienholder forecloses and the second lienholder gets nothing anyway.

This week's Congressional hearings will explore how equity lines and other junior liens are thwarting the mortgage modification process.