The Mortgage Crisis

The housing crisis is getting worse:

CINCINNATI (Reuters) - Until last year, financial counselors at the Home Ownership Center of Greater Cincinnati spent most of their time teaching Americans how to buy a first home. Now, they're deluged by broken and bereft homeowners facing foreclosure.

"Oh Lord, there is no way we can keep up with these calls," said Kaye Britton, a foreclosure counselor at the downtown nonprofit group that promotes home ownership to minority Americans, among others.

…Britton said people should call a reputable credit counselor as soon as they're in trouble. Loans can be restructured, and emergency funding may be available. But she admits the counseling industry is already overwhelmed.

"If I stop answering calls to actually talk to a client and help them, the messages pile up, and there's no time to call them all back," Britton said. "It's only going to get worse."

I'd be curious to know whether this is concentrated in the low end of the market or whether it's pretty well distributed across the board. I have a suspicion it's the latter. A lot of relatively upscale houses in my neighborhood have gone of the market recently, and there's little sign these people were planning to move in the months just before the houses were put on the market.

I would add that the average number of days houses remain on the market unsold is skyrocketing around here. One house down the street that went on the market last June, listed at $1,250,000 is still on the market, and there are several others that have been on the market just about as long.