Unencumbered by the thought process!

A September report on defaults from Foreclosure Radar provides the details of what it says is a 61 percent drop in notices of default - issued when borrowers fall two or three monthly payments behind.

Some day such a drop will be the greatest of news for all of us. But not today yet. Jim Wasserman.

MDA DataQuick shows no leveling off of foreclosures during July, August and September in its newest quarterly statistics.

The news is grim almost everywhere:

• 79,511 foreclosures statewide in the third quarter. That's more than 190,000 the first nine months of this year - and nearly 275,000 since the beginning of 2007.
• More than 7,700 new foreclosures in the eight-county Sacramento region (Amador, El Dorado, Nevada, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties). That brings the 2008 tally to more than 19,000. Since the beginning of Jan. 2007, that's more than 29,000 capital-area households that have been displaced by foreclosure. 

You'll note that the news release [says defaults are falling. That's not because fewer people are having problems, though. It's due to a new state law that requires lenders to spend more time contacting troubled borrowers before starting the foreclosure process.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development on Oct. 8 revised its total HECM endorsement numbers for fiscal year 2008 to 110,754 loans, according to HUD spokesman Lemar Wooley.

The new number is 1,400 fewer loans than the HECM Endorsement Summary Report released by HUD on Oct. 1, which includes loans insured through Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year. Volume was still more than the 107,558 HECMs endorsed last fiscal year.

On Oct. 2, Federal Housing Commissioner Brian Montgomery, assistant secretary for housing, announced at the Mortgage Bankers Association's Fall Reverse Mortgage Lending Conference that HUD had another record year with 160,000 HECM loans. Later that day, he clarified to The Reverse Mortgage Report that the total was 156,000.

According to the most recent FHA Outlook report, 156,000 represented the projected number of applications for fiscal year 2008 as of Sept. 15. The FHA had actually received 138,413 applications as of Sept. 15.

Wooley said Meg Burns, director of HUD's Office of Single Family Program Development, claims the difference between Montgomery's numbers and the more recent, lower number was her fault. "She says she put the number in the speech and simply took it from the wrong category," Wooley stated in an email.

Also, CNN’s American Morning homepage has been displaying links to reverse mortgage information for the past week.  These links could have been here for a while but it’s the first time I’ve seen them.  It’s good to see a major news outlet like CNN promoting reverse mortgages more.