California, Foreclosure | featured news

San Bernardino County, with some of the nation’s highest foreclosure rates, may use eminent domain to buy up mortgages and cut them to the current value of the homes.

Stockton, the California city with the nation's second-highest foreclosure rate, is facing a moment of decision on whether to become the biggest city to file for bankruptcy, as a deadline for talks between the city and its creditors approached late Monday.

On a suburban block with six family homes, palm trees and views of the surrounding green hills, nothing at 110 Windsor Court stood out. Its occupants, who had moved into the foreclosed house a few years earlier, were quiet types. Until the noise from falling roof tiles alerted neighbors to a fire there one recent morning, and Stephen Snowden, who lived nearby, banged on the front door. Nobody was inside, but firefighters discovered that the house had been converted into a type of illegal business found increasingly in suburbia: a marijuana grow house.

California's attorney general said on Thursday her state will receive up to $18 billion in benefits under a federal-state mortgage settlement to be announced later today.

Prices in San Francisco and Los Angeles, which had been increasing, both fell in August from July. Home prices are falling faster in the nation's largest cities, and a record number of foreclosures are expected to push prices down further through next year.

The jump from the previous quarter is the first time the measure has increased since early 2009, according to data from MDA DataQuick. However, the numbers are down from the same period last year.

The number of homes entering the first stage of foreclosure fell in the fourth quarter compared with the previous quarter, MDA DataQuick says -- a sign that banks are working with delinquent borrowers.

Fewer Californians entered foreclosure during the last three months of the year as bailed-out banks appeared to step up their work with delinquent borrowers, according to data released this morning, although the number of homes taken back by banks rose slightly.

California, Florida, Nevada and Arizona account for about 46% of the foreclosure starts in the country, the Mortgage Bankers Assn. reports. California and three other states continued to take an outsize share of the blame for the foreclosure epidemic sweeping the nation.

Brad Ramos, the police chief of Indio, Calif., population 79,000, does everything he can to contain his town's foreclosure epidemic. In a town where on the worst streets, 75% of homes are in foreclosure, Ramos hopes that if he can keep the neighborhoods looking presentable, he might be able to hold out long enough for when buyers return.

President Barack Obama announced fresh aid to struggling homeowners in California Thursday, playing a bit of divide-and-conquer by pitting his Republican critics in Washington against GOP governors and mayors eager for the federal money.