Current Events > The next crisis for Puerto Rico: a crush of foreclosures

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/16/business/puerto-rico-housing-foreclosures.html

Puerto Rico has had an awful decade and its about to get worse.

First came a brutal 10-year recession and financial crisis that drove businesses from this island and left 44 percent of the population impoverished. Then, in September, Hurricane Maria, a powerful Category 4 storm, shredded buildings, wrecked the electrical power grid and possibly led to more than 1,000 deaths.

Now Puerto Rico is bracing for another blow: a housing meltdown that could far surpass the worst of the foreclosure crisis that devastated Phoenix, Las Vegas, Southern California and South Florida in the past decade. If the current numbers hold, Puerto Rico is headed for a foreclosure epidemic that could rival what happened in Detroit, where abandoned homes became almost as plentiful as occupied ones.

About one-third of the islands 425,000 homeowners are behind on their mortgage payments to banks and Wall Street firms that previously bought up distressed mortgages. Tens of thousands have not made payments for months. Some 90,000 borrowers became delinquent as a consequence of Hurricane Maria, according to Black Knight Inc., a data firm formerly known as Black Knight Financial Services.

Puerto Ricos 35 percent foreclosure and delinquency rate is more than double the 14.4 percent national rate during the depths of the housing implosion in January 2010. And there is no prospect of the problems solving itself or quickly.

If there is no income, the people cannot make payments, said Ricardo Ramos-Gonzlez, coordinator of a consumer legal aid clinic at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law. Thousands have lost their jobs, thousands of small business have closed, and thousands more have left the country.

At the moment, dealing with a mortgage lender about a missed payment may be a distant concern for many of the 3.4 million people in Puerto Rico. They are literally still picking up the pieces, struggling to live without electricity or trying to get insurance companies to pay claims to repair their homes. More than 100,000 people are believed to have left to go live with friends and family on the mainland.

Residents won a reprieve when the federal government imposed a temporary moratorium on foreclosures, which stops banks and investors that bought mortgages at cut-rate prices from evicting delinquent borrowers or starting new foreclosures. Many lenders also have agreed to waive missed payments during the moratorium.

But that moratorium is scheduled to expire in early 2018, and lawyers and housing counselors expect that to trigger a surge in foreclosures.

We will see an avalanche of cases, said Josue Castellanos-Otero, a lawyer, who said many of his housing clients were focused on getting insurance companies to pay to fix their damaged homes.

Repairing the housing market in Puerto Rico will take more than rebuilding storm-damaged homes and the electrical grid. It will involve banks and investors reworking tens of thousands of troubled mortgages and waiving missed payments.

The looming housing crisis threatens to upend the social structure on the island and means the aftereffects of the storm will be felt for years to come. It could be particularly painful for the elderly, who often have limited incomes and whose homes tend to be their most valuable assets.

---

That's fucking horrible.
---

Ugh...my people are going through the worst right now
---

Sounds like banks and mortgage companies are about lose a lot of money.

Which is kind of to be expected after a hurricane like that and when you invest in an island that can get its shit rocked by nature <_<

I have nothing but sympathy for the people Puerto Rico.
---

Honestly with Climate Change getting worse and worse, I almost think it might be time to start looking to just desert these islands and places that will get rocked by hurricanes and storms year in and year out.

yeah I know that would be a logistical nightmate
---

Drpooplol posted...

Honestly with Climate Change getting worse and worse, I almost think it might be time to start looking to just desert these islands and places that will get rocked by hurricanes and storms year in and year out.

yeah I know that would be a logistical nightmate

Chinese myth
---

what?
---

Drpooplol posted...

what?

he's saying that global warming is just a chinese myth

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/265895292191248385?lang=en
---