While the government's wheels are in motion, the foreclosure train has stopped again.
JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America (Countrywide) and Wells Fargo have all announced that they will suspend foreclosures through March 6 as the government works on another "financial stability" (i.e. bailout) bill aimed at keeping people in their homes.
I'll be brief and to the point: the reason this is happening, in my opinion, is not because the banks are good-hearted Samaritans. They are suspending foreclosures again because their hope is to sell these junk loans to the government at a better price than they would get by foreclosing.
In other words, they want to transfer their losses to you and me.
I have many buyers with an interest in foreclosures right now, and we have been seeing this "stop-start" process since November, as banks suspend normal operations in hopes of offloading these bad loans to the government.
I won't attach a judgement to it here, other than to say it's really messing with the market. We've got people ready, willing and able to buy these homes and improve them, but the inventory is so (artificially) limited that buyers get frustrated.
Sooner or later, most of these bad loans will be foreclosed on... and most likely it will be taxpayers who take the hit.
