Nationwide Foreclosures Soar - 765 a day in Florida
The best business in 2007 was the foreclosure business. Foreclosures were up 75% last year nationwide. Nationwide, at least 1% of all households were in some type of foreclosure. According to the 2007 United States Foreclosure Market Report, there were 2,203,295 mortgage foreclosures filed in the United States. Foreclosure mills (law firms that process foreclosures) and their attorneys were working overtime trying to keep up with the demand. Not many other businesses can say that their business was up 75% over the year before.
The number of foreclosures nationally is staggering, but when you look at the report closely, some states are feeling the pain worse than others. In Florida, 279,325 foreclosures were filed. In essence, 765 foreclosures were filed a day on a state-wide level. This number includes Saturdays and Sundays and Holidays. Of course, if you eliminated the weekends and holidays, the number per day would be much much higher. In Florida, the foreclosure statistics are much worse than the nation as a whole. In December 2007, the number of foreclosures were 275% higher than the number of foreclosures in 2006.
My good friend and colleague, Gene Melchionne, recently blogged on this topic for http://www.mortgagelawnetwork.com. He discussed the foreclosure situation with a different twist. Gene wanted everyone to contact their Representative or Senator.
Gene obviously has concerns about his home state of Connecticut, and I have concerns about how this mess will change the lives of the people in Southwest Florida.
