A Stern Glance

Nevada foreclosure activity decreased by a double-digit percentage for the second straight month, but the state continued to document the nation’s top foreclosure rate with one in every 119 housing units receiving a foreclosure filing in November — 3.5 times the national average. A total of 9,295 Nevada properties received a foreclosure filing during the month, a 33 percent decrease from the previous month and also a 33 percent decrease from November 2008. Nevada’s November total was 52 percent below its July total of 19,535 properties with foreclosure filings. Click here for the full RealtyTrac news release.

According to The Wall Street Journal, ”analysts at Deutsche Bank Securities expect 21 million U.S. households to end up owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth by the end of 2010. If one in five of those households defaults, the losses to banks and investors could exceed $400 billion. As a proportion of the economy, that’s roughly equivalent to the losses suffered in the savings-and-loan debacle of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The flip side of those losses, though, is massive debt relief that can help offset the pain of rising unemployment and put cash in consumers’ pockets.

For the 4.8 million U.S. households that data provider LPS Applied Analytics estimates haven’t paid their mortgages in at least three months, the added cash flow could amount to about $5 billion a month — an injection that in the long term could be worth more than the tax breaks in the Obama administration’s economic-stimulus package.”

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