Foreclosure Crisis Remains Despite Housing Market Gains
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Stockbyte/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — In what may be the closest thing yet to an official pronouncement that the housing market has finally started to get better, economists are increasingly saying that despite a slow down in the foreclosure recovery, the market is improving.
David Blitzer, chief economist of Standard and Poor’s, the company that releases the influential Case-Shiller report, says that in most markets prices are rising.
The Wall Street Journal reports, “The housing market has turned — at last.”
And a survey by Wells Fargo Securities economists finds that even as the recovery slows down, “the budding recovery in the housing market appears to be gradually gaining momentum.”
But the foreclosure crisis is far from over.
Foreclosure tracking firm RealtyTrac says foreclosure filings fell 11 percent in the first half of this year, but banks are increasingly putting troubled property owners on notice for possible action. That means there could be a rise in auction sales and bank repossessions by early next year.
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