Repeated Foreclosures Haunting some Homeowners

Some of the homeowners are getting trapped by repeated foreclosures. Many borrowers became tempted by lax lending operations during the years of the housing boom. But now they are defaulting on many properties.

One of the victims is Brenda Duchemin who prays in front of her shrine to dispel negative vibrations. She and her husband Mohammad Ashraf had purchased two houses. Both were snapped up by foreclosure last February. Brenda is worried about her karma of a previous life.

The housing market has lately started to move up but there are thousands stranded in Southland facing foreclosure struggling with their financial position. The case of Ashraf and Ducehman is extreme because of having two of their houses being gobbled up by foreclosure. Further there is another one being threatened. There are quite a few who are in the same boat.

The problem is noticeable in regions that had drawn speculators during the time of the boom. In Maricopa County that is inclusive of Phoenix a minimum of 283 homeowners have received foreclosure notices on two or more units since 2006 according to the findings of RealtyTrac.

Rick Sharga of RealtyTrac said that foreclosures on many units are “probably more common in this decade than they’ve ever been because everyone was running to get into the real estate investing business.”

In Nevada Clark County is another region that had attracted the speculators who bought and sold houses with hardly any gap during the boom years. Here nearly 179 homeowners are facing multiple foreclosures. Sharga said that perhaps the actual numbers are bigger than the tentative estimates. The number of multiple foreclosures in seven counties had been studied by the firm – Clark, Los Angeles, Maricopa, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and San Diego.

Sean O’Toole of ForeclosureRadar said, “It wasn’t unusual to allow folks to buy not only two homes but three, four or five.” During the boom years that the more houses they bought the more would be their profits because the real estate market kept rising. He said, “In a lot of cases, you had folks in this gold rush mentality. “Real estate is going up, the more houses I buy, the more money I’ll make.’”

This trend was less noticeable in regions where property prices were high and consequently lesser number of speculators. In Los Angeles, where Duchemin and Ashraf reside there have been 135 incidents of multiple foreclosures despite the numbers being more in the counties of Maricopa and Clark.

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