| Phila. gets temporary foreclosure freeze
Philadelphia City Council on Thursday passed a measure calling for a moratorium on home mortgage foreclosures, and the city's April sheriff's sales was postponed, City Councilman Curtis Jones Jr. said. Jones, a co-sponsor of the resolution, said he will now work "to suspend sheriff's sales indefinitely because, until we have a system that values economic justice, people should not be forced out of their homes." The nonbinding council legislation, designed to provide time for residents to work with lenders to keep their homes, needed the support of Sheriff John Green and Common Pleas Court President Judge C. Darnell Jones to be implemented, Jones said. It is not the first time such a request has been made. In 2004, in response to a then-record monthly foreclosure sale of 1,120 properties, City Council asked the sheriff and courts to intervene.
Region feels housing crisis
Foreclosures on single family homes, condominiums and duplexes rocketed across Western Pennsylvania in February to their highest level in 22 years, according to a report issued Thursday. Some 400 homes were lost to foreclosure last month, a 19 percent increase over the February 2007 total of 336, according to RealStats, a South Side-based real estate information company. The previous high was in 2005, according to company Vice President Daniel Murrer. "February's 19 percent jump in foreclosures, combined with 11.4 percent drop in market activity, is troubling news for Western Pennsylvania. We've seen the clouds on the horizon; the storm is now here," Murrer said in a news release. The storm arrived even though January's total of 342 foreclosures was down 2.3 percent across the region from the same month in 2007.
Now families face £1,300 a year mortgage increase
Families face a �1,300 annual increase in their mortgage payments after the country's biggest building society announced a rise in its lending rates. The Nationwide will today hit homeowners with its fifth increase in mortgage rates since the start of the year. Experts said homowners are paying the price for the global credit crunch, which is squeezing the amount banks and building societies have to lend. On January 1, a typical repayment mortgage of �158,000 would have cost �968 a month with a Nationwide two-year tracker at 5.48 per cent. Today, the rate will rise by a further 0.57 of a percentage point, to 6.6 per cent. The increases since the start of the year adds an extra �109 a month, or �1,308 a year to mortgage payments.
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