Sudbury MA Real Estate

Mortgage Industry: We ARE helping

A new study from the Mortgage Bankers Association says companies provided some kind of assistance to 246,000 troubled borrowers during the third quarter. That’s smaller than the number of new foreclosure actions during that July through September period, but — here’s the crucial claim — higher than the number of preventable foreclosure actions.

The MBA says 63 percent of foreclosure actions in the third quarter were taken against borrowers who were beyond help, for one of the following three reasons:

1. The home was owned as an investment (18 percent).

2. The borrower received help, then fell behind again (29 percent).

3. The borrower could not be reached (23 percent).

(The numbers don’t add up because some homeowners fall into multiple categories.)

If you follow that logic, then only about 149,000 (the remaining 37 percent) of the 384,000 foreclosure proceedings in the third quarter targeted homeowners who could have been helped.

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5 lousy excuses for not buying a home

For many, the American dream is simply out of reach for financial reasons. But for others, it’s not the money, it’s the . . . well, we’ve come up with five reasons why people don’t want to buy real estate.

Perhaps you’ve used these excuses yourself or know a colleague, family member or friend who has. We’ve enlisted the aid of experts — Stacy Francis and Nancy Flint-Budde, certified financial planners in New York City and Salem, N.Y., respectively, and Mark Schussel, a spokesman for the Chubb Group of Insurance Cos. in Warren, N.J. — to counter these excuses and knock some sense into the real-estate-challenged.

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