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In Default, But Staying Put

By Beacon Staff

Since the housing bubble burst two years ago, the number of people “walking away” from their homes, often because they owe more on them than they are worth, has increased dramatically. But then there are those who decide to stop paying their mortgages and decide to stay until someone forces them out. And with so many properties being foreclosed on nationwide, homeowners in default are staying put a lot longer than they used to. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/business/01nopay.html?pagewanted=1&ref=homepage&src=me" title="From the New York Times:”>From the New York Times:

Foreclosure procedures have been initiated against 1.7 million of the nation’s households. The pace of resolving these problem loans is slow and getting slower because of legal challenges, foreclosure moratoriums, government pressure to offer modifications and the inability of the lenders to cope with so many souring mortgages.

The average borrower in foreclosure has been delinquent for 438 days before actually being evicted, up from 251 days in January 2008, according to LPS Applied Analytics.

In Montana, the average number of days a borrower is delinquent before being evicted is 359 days, below the national average of 438 days. New York leads the country in this category, with property spending an average of 561 days in foreclosure.

Read the entire story here.