More American homes were lost to foreclosure in August than in any month since late 2007.
And what’s even more alarming, the numbers are getting worse.
The 95,364 homes that were lost to foreclosure last month were up “only” 3 percent from July – but they were up 25 percent from August a year ago! And nearly 339,000 additional properties got warnings about possible foreclosure last month, which is an increase of 4 percent from a month earlier.
Those numbers, provided by the foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac, are horrible news, not only for the tens of thousands of Americans who are losing their homes, but for their neighbors, whose homes will drop in value as more and more properties glut the market.
It becomes clearer, month by month, that Washington had no business pressuring lenders to loosen their lending standards in the name of getting lots more Americans – many with poor credit – into mortgages they really could not afford. Yet that was standard practice for years.
Sadly, we are still only beginning to feel the consequences of that bad policy.