News About Properties

After the home is gone

More than a million homes have been lost to foreclosure in the past two years. And according to data from Mortgage Bankers Association, banks are now in the process of foreclosing on 1.5 million more.

The impact of the mortgage crisis has been obvious in both the worldwide credit crunch and the presidential campaign, where there has been a lot of talk about the plight of overextended homeowners. But the specific personal costs of home loss have been less evident, at least to those not paying them.

Not surprisingly, the forced loss of a home — the place where many of the memories that define a life and a family are made — is deeply traumatic, according to Dr. Robert Gifford, an environmental psychologist at the University of Victoria, Canada. This is true, he said, even when the loss is due in part to a homeowner’s own financial mismanagement.

Massive Effort to Save Mortgages

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. launched an ambitious plan Friday to modify the terms of $70 billion in mortgages for borrowers who are behind on their payments or soon could be.

The move by the New York bank will cover as many as 400,000 borrowers. They’ll be moved into loans carrying lower interest rates, smaller principal amounts or other more-affordable terms.

The changes will particularly focus on a type of loan structured in such a way that the borrower’s outstanding balance sometimes grows month after month. J.P. Morgan inherited $54 billion of such loans with its takeover of the beleaguered thrift Washington Mutual Inc. in September.

The plan comes amid intense national focus on a root cause of global financial turmoil: rising home foreclosures, and what the role of banks and government should be in helping struggling homeowners. The banking industry is under much political pressure address the foreclosure problem.

Foreclosure king surfs troubled home waters

The South Bay’s reigning King of Foreclosures runs around barefoot, doesn’t own a cellphone and drives an 8-year-old Toyota Tundra pickup.

And without looking the part, Leo Nordine, an affable Hermosa Beach-based real estate broker, expects to average one escrow closing a day this year — something that would make most agents salivate.

Nordine, a 45-year-old native son and surfer didn’t just catch the current foreclosure tidal wave, he has sold 3,500 bank-owned homes during the last two decades. He credits his uncanny ability to time the real estate market’s cycles and position himself to reap its rewards as the key to his extraordinary success. And he does it all from the comfort of his home overlooking the Strand in Hermosa Beach.