Sacramento Minorities Face Unprecedented Economic Tsunami

(EMAILWIRE.COM, January 10, 2007 ) SACRAMENTO, CALIF -- Sacramento has recently been ranked among the most at-risk real estate markets in the country, according to The Center for Responsible Lending. The reason that so many individual homeowners face tremendous risk of losing their homes to foreclosure in 2007 and 2008 is mainly because of the problems with sub-prime loans. More than 2 million American families are using these types of loans and an estimated twenty percent, or 400,000, of these borrowers will likely face foreclosure. These loans tend to predominate in areas where people are heavily African-American and Latino. Across the country, fifty percent of African-Americans and forty percent of Latinos who purchased homes in the last five years used one of these sub-prime loans.The problems with these loans are numerous and can hurt people with higher than average incomes as well as those with more modest incomes. Some of these features include low teaser interest rates and the option to pay interest only which can result in a borrower owing more than a home is worth. Another problem with sub-prime mortgages is that they often have no impound account for taxes and insurance.All of our neighborhoods in Sacramento are at risk of further property devaluation as investors and homeowners abandon their properties to the foreclosure process. Vacancies, blight, and graffiti or vandalism often plague neighborhoods where properties are in the process of being foreclosed upon. This effect is counteracted somewhat when real investors, such as Patrick McGilvray, J.D. of http://www.TheHomeBuyingCenter.com, Sacramento’s #1 Home Buyer, and his team of investors, buy homes before they are in the official foreclosure process. He commented, “It’s a tragedy for our entire community that the banking industry has created such a ticking time bomb of poorly understood mortgages that will result in thousands of foreclosures in Sacramento. Truly, many sub-prime mortgages were pitched in a way that seemed too-good-to-be-true. Unfortunately, the consumers who purchased these products were not sufficiently informed and will end up suffering. Sometimes we help people sell a house fast and avoid foreclosure but only if they contact us early enough.”In Sacramento alone, the number of foreclosures has quadrupled when compared with early 2002. The study by The Center for Responsible Lending predicts that things will get worse before they get better, especially for Latinos and African-Americans.Contact:Patrick McGilvrayhttp://www.thehomebuyingcenter.com pmq@thehomebuyingcenter.comTel: 916-868-3033

Joseph Nchor

pmq@thehomebuyingcenter.com