Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Foreclosures in Athens GA

The following article recently appeared in the Atlanta Business Chronicle.


Georgia foreclosure rate ranks No. 5 in October
Georgia was in the top 10 for total foreclosure filings and foreclosure rates in October, according to Realty Trac's October 2007 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report.
The state had one foreclosure for every 332 households for a total of 11,352 filings in October. Georgia's foreclosure rate was up 37.8 percent from September and grew 64.6 percent over October 2006. Its rate was the fifth highest in the nation in October.
The United States had a total of 224,451 foreclosure filings in October, up 2 percent from September and up 94 percent from October 2006. The national foreclosure rate for the month was one foreclosure filing for every 555 households.
"Overall foreclosure activity continues to register at a high level compared to last year, but it appears to have leveled off over the past two months after hitting a high for the year in August," said James J. Saccacio, CEO of RealtyTrac. "Default notices were down nearly 9 percent in October, indicating that some of the efforts on the part of homeowners, lenders and advocacy groups to find alternatives to foreclosure may be starting to have an impact. On the other hand, bank repossessions were up nearly 35 percent, evidence that more homeowners who enter foreclosure are losing their homes."


Many homeowners are not aware of the options available to them. The first thing you need to do, if you can't make your payments, is to call the mortgage company. They are much more open to working out a plan with you. Possibilities include revising the terms of the loan and adding the past due payments to the end of the loan. If you can't get the mortgage company to work with you (or if you're just not comfortable asking) call us. We are happy to do whatever we can to help you.

If you are not going to be able to work out a plan to repay and just want to avoid foreclosure, we can help with that too. We will contact your mortgage company and discuss options to help you get the house sold and save you from having a foreclosure on your credit report.

So, the main thing to do is act right away when you realize that you're in trouble. Once the property goes in to foreclosure, there is nothing to be done. Even if the 4-week advertising period has started, call us. We will do everything we can to help. Jerri 706-296-4395 or e-mail us.