Foreclosures soar in Detroit
The number of foreclosures is rising across the country. But few regions have seen as much foreclosure activity as has Detroit.
Default Research, a provider of foreclosure real estate data, reports that foreclosures in the Detroit area rose 108 percent in 2007.
Wayne County, where Detroit is located, had 29,646 foreclosures last year, according to Default Research. That represents 3.53 percent of all households in the county.
Serdar Bankaci, president and chief executive officer of Default Research, said in a press release that Wayne County probably won’t see the end of its foreclosure crisis until late in 2008. The reason is a familiar one: Too many homeowners in the county took out adjustable rate mortgages with artificially low monthly interest rates. Now that those rates are resetting to higher levels, more homeowners will be unable to make their monthly payments.
Detroit may be a severe example, but the data collected by places like Default Research and RealtyTrac suggest that the level of foreclosures is still high across the country. It also suggests, unfortunately, that the situation won’t be getting better any time soon.
