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23 February, 2011 Million-dollar foreclosures rise as rich walk away

Summary In the wake of our country's housing market collapse there is no denying that the average and poor Americans have been slammed with foreclosures and sometimes worse. The fact is that all Americans have been affected by the fall of the housing market even the richest. This article brings to light the fact that the owners of million dollar plus houses are losing their houses to foreclosure faster than the rest of the nation. It states that more than 36000 homes valued at over 1million dollars in value have been foreclosed or serviced with a note of default in 2011. This is a jump of more than 115% since 2007 while homes valued at over 2million dollars jumped by 223% in the same amount of time. Considering all of this it seems that mid ranged homes($500,000-$1million) should also have drastic falls. Surprisingly foreclosures in homes in this price range has dropped by 21% in this same amount of time.

Many of the foreclosures on normal house holds are due to not being able to pay the mortgages however for the extremely wealthy this isn’t always the case. A lot of times it’s more of a business decision than anything. Along with this doing a foreclosure can take much longer and basically give them up to a year of free living accommodations. Relevance  The crash of the housing market definitely shows that changing times of an economic transformation is not always one of good. With millions of Americans losing their homes and jobs it is safe to say that we have gone through an economic transformation of great proportions. This article is dead on when it states that we are years away from the recovery of the housing market therefor I believe that this article is not just relevant now but will be for quite some time. Evaluation  This article was very informative and it was good in the fact that it looked into the situation deeper. If it had just told us the numbers without giving us the reasons for it then it could have seemed a lot worse than it is. I don’t think that I would have realized that instead of not being able to afford it a lot of millionaires just think it makes better sense not to have such lavish properties, or as many of them. I believe that the economic downturn as of late has not really effected the rich as much but has simply made them more conscious of the way they spend their money and also how to keep their money safe. I mean they didn’t become millionaires for being stupid right? Questions 1. When will the housing market begin it’s comeback 2. What kinds of prices are these million dollar homes going for after they are foreclosed? 3. What percentage of the housing market is made up of 1million dollar and over homes?