Posted by Scott Van VoorhisLooks like the foreclosure epidemic is getting its second wind.The first wave of foreclosures featured homeowners duped into buying homes they couldn’t afford with goofy, subprime loans. Not to mention a whole lot of small-time investors who bought units in hopes of flipping them for big profits, as well as a just outright fraudsters who used straw buyers to create artificial sales.But much of that first wave of crazy subprime mortgages gone bad has already crashed into the housing market and economy. Now we are starting to see the second wave, regular homeowners who are losing their jobs and their homes due to the economic downturn, of course triggered in part by the subprime fiasco.Anyway, that is the way some are reading the latest foreclosure stats, with the number of troubled mortgages rising to 7.8 percent of all home loans, the highest since 1972, Bloomberg reports. Loans actually in foreclosure now amount to 3.3 percent of all mortgages in the country, an all-time high.The Mortgage Bankers Association is pointing to the deepening recession and job losses as a key factor behind the growing number of bad loans.Let’s just hope President Obama’s $75 billion lifeline to homeowners in trouble works a bit better than the now long list of previous multibillion-dollar rescue plans rolled out by the federal government and several states, including Massachusetts.Still, even the president’s ambitious effort won’t help you if you’ve lost your job and have no money at all to pay your mortgage.Contact Jason Donn
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