The North Carolina Bankruptcy Information Blog

Amid the lingering housing crisis, full of fraudulent foreclosures, falling home prices, missed mortgage modifications, and underwater homes drowning in delinquencies, many disenfranchised Americans have turned to renting to keep a roof over their heads, and their heads above financial water.

But new numbers from the Census Bureau and Morgan Stanley reveal that home ownership rates have fallen even more dramatically than previously thought, with average Americans avoiding the real estate reckoning through a variety of rental safety nets.

While, the official home ownership rate is around 66 percent, if you take out the widening number of mortgage delinquencies, this figure is actually 59.7 percent.…

As countless bankruptcy clients in this country have made clear, seeking the debt dissolution solutions of a personal bankruptcy can help free up finances that help with home mortgage payments—even amid the real estate reckoning of the recent recession—and, as such, aid many households in avoiding the perils of foreclosure.

But now the proof is in the reporting.

In a report released Tuesday, New York Federal Reserve researchers Donald P. Morgan, Benjamin Iverson and Matthew Botsch determined that there is a direct link between the October 2005 change in bankruptcy laws via bankruptcy abuse reforms (or BAR)—a change that made it more difficult for ordinary Americans to eliminate debts in bankruptcy—and approximately 116,000 additional subprime mortgage foreclosures in 2006.…

Amid the lingering national housing crisis, many renters may have felt that they had gotten away relatively unscathed in these tough economic times, avoiding underwater housing prices, high interest mortgage fluctuations, and the fear of foreclosure from lenders eager to toss unwary debtors from their humble (or not so humble) homes.

But in 2011, many renters should be aware of a new worry of their very own in the coming year: tenants who get behind on their housing payments will begin negatively impacting their own credit rating. That’s right. According to Lynnette Khalfani-Cox of WalletPop, Experian, one of a trio of primary credit bureaus, has recently started collecting consumer rental payment information for the purposes of including that very data in its credit reports.…

The nation’s residential real estate market continues to tumble, further complicating life for millions of Americans looking to either buy or sell a home in the near future.

Not only that, but home sales are so tightly wound into our economic system that every ebb and flow tends to create ripples on Wall Street. Financial analysts around the country are doing all they can to instill a sense of calm in the American people about our financial system. Every time they do, more facts about a faltering real estate market come to light, scaring those who currently own and increasing the hesitation in those thinking about buying.…

Even with tremendously low interest rates and diminished, buyer-friendly market conditions, owning a home can still be quite expensive.

If you have had your heart set on home ownership as a personal, post-bankruptcy goal, it’s important that you also consider the ancillary costs of home ownership before you make a move based solely on an affordable monthly mortgage payment.

The best advice for would-be home owners is to limit the role emotions have in your buying decisions. Real estate agents see it happen all the time—and so do creditors. Suddenly, your reasonable monthly payment balloons by a few hundred bucks because you believed that one house on the list was the one you had to have, even if it was $50,000 over your budget.…

Just a few years ago, home ownership was something available to just about anyone—an economic reality that to an extent, contributed to where we are today. Nevertheless, the mortgage boom helped a lot of people realize that benefits of home ownership. It’s simply too bad that it came with so many hidden financial pitfalls, many of which have subjected sub-prime borrowers (and also those with standard mortgages) to serious, long-term hardships.

Today, almost the exact opposite has become reality. Mortgages are exceptionally more difficult to obtain and when they can be approved, the houses themselves don’t qualify because of drastically diminishing real estate values.…

It’s a couple of years after your debts were discharged in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, you’re on track with your payments and expenses, and you’ve been working steadily to rebuild your credit. Now you’re ready to buy a new home: you’ve done all the homework, you’ve looked for good lenders and you’ve found your dream house. All you need now is to borrow what the house is worth, right? Well, not quite. If you have had some negative history on your credit report since your bankruptcy, you may need to come up with as much as 30% of the value as a down payment in order convince a lender to extend a loan to you.…

Buying a home after bankruptcy is a smart move. And yes, it is possible! If you don’t own a home already, buying a house is an excellent step toward rebuilding your financial life. A home can be a great investment because it is one of the few major assets you will own that will hopefully appreciate over time. Home ownership also demonstrates stability, which can reflect positively on your credit profile.

The good news is, as soon as a year after your debts are discharged in a Chapter 7 bankruptcy, you may be eligible for a good car loan, and just two years after completing a bankruptcy, you may become eligible for a home mortgage with a good interest rate.…

Future home ownership is a major concern of so many people who have made the decision to file bankruptcy. A previous post on this blog discussed the ins and outs of your ability to buy a house after emerging from bankruptcy. The good news is that it is completely possible and that you can indeed be a very viable mortgage candidate.

However, there are some drawbacks to home ownership in general, many of which are related to costs. For starters, buying a home is not going to be the same rapid-return investment it was five years ago. As you know, the recent real estate boom sent home prices flying because financing was so readily available.…