NEWSMAXA: The $25 billion settlement with banks over foreclosure abuses may trigger a wave of home seizures, inflicting short-term pain on delinquent U.S. borrowers while making a long-term housing recovery more likely.
Principal reductions may help cut the number of mortgage defaults by improving homeowners’ finances and reducing incentives for so-called strategic default, when homeowners walk away from a property because they have too much negative equity, according to a Federal Reserve report sent to Congress on Jan. 4. Home prices have dropped 33 percent from their July 2006 peak, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller index of values in 20 U.S. cities.
U.S. homeowners have $750 billion in negative equity, Humphries said. The settlement will help the housing market “at the margins, but little more,” according to an analysis late last month by London-based Capital Economics of the impact of the settlement on housing… (more).
