15% Of American Mortgage Owners Spend 50%+ Of Income For House Payments

By: TraderMark Friday, September 26, 2008 12:23 PM

Other places include California metro areas of Stockton, Los Angeles, Riverside, Oxnard-Thousand Oaks, San Francisco, and San Diego. Also in the top 10 are the Fort Myers, Sarasota and Orlando metro areas in Florida, and New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island

Harvey, 64, lives on about $3,300 a month in social security and disability payments for herself and her four disabled grandchildren. She nearly lost her home this summer after her adjustable rate mortgage payment jumped. "I did not understand that in two years, this would adjust out of control," she said. "Nobody deserves what I've had to go through." (nobody appears to have the time to read documents that are longer than 1 page - even if it contains a loan for $200K, $300K, $400K - it is "just too hard")

And the latest data from CA is in...

California home prices tumbled a record 41 percent in August from a year earlier as foreclosure sales pushed down values in the biggest U.S. state. The median price of an existing, single-family detached home fell to $350,140 and will likely fall further, the Los Angeles- based California Association of Realtors said today in a report. Sales increased 56.7 percent from August 2007 and 1.8 percent from July.
More than 101,000 California households received a default notice, were warned of a pending auction or foreclosed on last month, RealtyTrac Inc., a seller of default data, said on Sept. 12. That was a third of the nation's total and represented one in 130 homes in the state.

So bulls will spin this as "sales increase 56.7%!"
Bears will spin it as "home prices fall 41%!"
Both true, but it is funny how economics always works in the end - lower prices will stir demand. Funny - the government simply does not want that (lower prices) to happen. Can't wait to be the proud owner of all these defaulted mortgages.

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