Foreclosures To Increase Into 2010

We have Obama's mortgage modification plan. We have massive government intervention into the market to reduce foreclosures and to make the free market work less efficiently. Despite all this political and bureaucratic intervention, the free market is still ruthless and foreclosures are expected to rise into next year.

The Los Angeles Times says:

The continued surge in delinquencies suggests that a recovery in the housing market could be stalled by the worsening job picture as well as by further fallout from the easy-money lending that prevailed during the boom years.

Signals about housing have been decidedly mixed. On the bright side, median home prices appear to have stabilized — for the time being, anyway — in hard-hit areas of California such as the Inland Empire, and have begun to inch up again in San Diego and Orange counties and in San Francisco.

But recent negative indicators, in addition to rising foreclosures, include the home lender group's report Wednesday that applications for mortgages to buy homes have declined for six straight weeks despite interest rates below 5% on 30-year fixed-rate loans. Also Wednesday, the Commerce Department said the seasonally adjusted rate of housing starts fell more than 10% in October from the previous month.