Forclosure woes touch all Mercer towns
BY ANDREW KITCHENMAN
Sunday, September 02, 2007Mercer County has been swept up in the mortgage meltdown affecting the nation, as foreclosures increase and residents face the re sults of taking out subprime mort gages with higher interest payments.
Foreclosure filings have risen from 728 through Aug. 20, 2006 to 928 for the same period this year, a 27.5-percent increase, according to the Mercer County Clerk’s office.
Some of those who can’t make their mortgage payments should never have received approval for the loans, according to Phyllis Sa lowe-Kaye, executive director of New Jersey Citizen Action, which provides mortgage counseling.
“They target low- and moderate-income minorities in urban areas,” Salowe-Kaye said of subprime lenders. She recalled one New Jersey resident with a $40,000 income who took out a $400,000 mortgage by claiming that renters would cover much of the mortgage cost.
New Jersey Citizen Action has provided counseling to hundreds of residents at its loan counseling center in Trenton.
The problem isn’t limited to cities like Trenton. While County Clerk Paula Sollami-Covello said the number of foreclosures in Tren ton traditionally has led the count, the past year has seen foreclosures increase in suburban municipalities such as Hamilton.
While mortgages that are listed under foreclosure in public notices often are resolved before an actual sheriff’s sale, the increase in foreclosure notices in some Mercer municipalities has been stark.
Trenton had 166 foreclosure no tices in the first seven months of this year, an increase of 29 over last year; Hamilton increased from 40 to 50; and Lawrence increased from 13 to 23, according to Jeff Posner, owner of SheriffSalesOnline.com, a Web site that tracks both initial filings and notices.
The root cause of many recent foreclosures is the wave of subprime mortgages, according to mortgage experts. Subprime mort gages are given to people with low credit scores due to missing payments or having limited credit histories. Subprime mortgages have higher interest rates and fees than conventional mortgages. Read more…
Tags: Foreclosure Websites, Market Watch
So there has finally been some good news on the housing market. July housing sales are up 2.8% as 
If I had to guess, I would say that 40% of the phone calls we get here at Sheriff Sales Online are about the quality and timeliness of our information. We have even received calls that just wanted to see if we would pick up the phone. “I just wanted to see if someone would actually answer?” they say. The funny thing is that I can’t blame them. I have also been ripped off by many foreclosure/real estate services in the past claiming that they had the info with special bells and whistles to boot, but after signing up I realized they just had all the bells and whistles integrated with their crappy information. I’m sure most of you have experienced similar results from web services you may have purchased in the past and I hate to say it, but the foreclosure web site business has a bad rap. There are lots of sexy and super hi-tech foreclosure sites out there, so you have to be careful. I have seen quality hi-tech foreclosure sites with crappy information and the most basic crappy looking site that had the best and most current info. Real Estate is behind the times with technology and is still making its climb up the internet ladder.
It is virtually impossible to cover every area in detail unless you have someone local to the area following it on a county level in most cases. Almost all nationwide foreclosure web sites have a heavy concentration with REO (Real Estate Owned) and Realtor® properties. Now I am not saying that these sites are not worth the money, I would just like to clear the air on how up to date and closely followed their information might be.
