Foreclosure

Inside a small cubicle in Timonium, Jessica Gatton Facini is saving homes. The 26-year-old sorts through foreclosure and lien documents from Baltimore homeowners, identifies a problem and then navigates the bureaucracy of big banks and government agencies in search of a solution. It's a challenging task - some homeowners would say impossible - but Facini wields a weapon most Marylanders do not. When she contacts a bank, her caller I.D. says "U.S. Congress. " As part of a little-known effort, congressional staffers across the country have been calling banks relentlessly to bargain for help for homeowners.

The rate of new foreclosure filings in Maryland far exceeded any other state's this spring, a spike caused in large part by the national robo-signing legal settlement that unleashed a flood of new cases. Almost 20 in every 1,000 home loans in Maryland - twice the national average - were drawn into the foreclosure process during April, May and June, according to survey data released Thursday by the Washington-based Mortgage Bankers Association. "If you look at what's going on in foreclosure starts, Maryland now has exceeded Florida, has exceeded Georgia - some of the states that have been up there at the top in terms of the percent of loans on which foreclosure actions have started," said Jay Brinkmann, the trade group's chief economist.

If you're a local Bank of America borrower behind on your home mortgage, chances are you've received an invitation to come chat in Baltimore. The company is holding a foreclosure-prevention event next Thursday through Saturday -- June 28 through June 30 -- at the Baltimore Hilton for customers whose loans it services. It's one in a series of face-to-face events that Bank of America and other mortgage servicers have put on. In other cases, they've participated in events organized by groups or political leaders . The appeal of in-person?

The clock is winding down on tax breaks available to homeowners looking to escape mountainous mortgage debt through a foreclosure or short sale. The Mortgage Debt Relief Act of 2007 will expire at the end of the year, if Congress does not take action to extend it. Without that relief, homeowners who back out of their mortgages with a short sale or foreclosure have to pay taxes on the amount that is forgiven. The Internal Revenue Service will levying taxes on the property as if the homeowners actually received the money.

A large waterfront parcel in Port Covington sold for $2 million at foreclosure auction Thursday to an investor who declined to identify himself. The site contains 5.2 acres of land and about five additional acres on two piers that jut into Winan's Cove. It is assessed for tax pursposes at $521,000. The site's previous owner, Struever Bros. Eccles & Rouse, defaulted on a multimillion-dollar mortgage, resulting in the trustee-ordered sale. The now-defunct developer owed more than $10.7 million for the land in South Baltimore off East Cromwell Street.

Those who rely on mainstream media to tell them what's happening can be forgiven for coming to the same opinion as ex-Gov. Robert Ehrlich, who wrote in his recent column "Capitalism on trial" that the Occupy movement has disintegrated. While aggressive law enforcement has prevented Occupy in many cities from re-establishing a prolonged and public presence, activists have put their energy to use by linking with community and neighborhood activists to fight the most visible footprint of the speculative 1 percent: foreclosed-upon homes.

Home sales in the Baltimore area were up 13 percent in May compared with a year earlier, but that figure hides some huge variations. Foreclosure sales dropped about 50 percent, simply because far fewer bank-owned homes are on the market right now. Short sales, by contrast, zoomed up about 60 percent. That isn't nearly enough to account for the drop in foreclosures, but it was sufficient to make short sales more numerous than foreclosure sales for the first time since Metropolitan Regional Information Systems began tracking distress deals three years ago. Conventional sales, meanwhile -- the ones with no bank involved except as a lender -- rose 28 percent.

You could be forgiven for putting "shadow inventory" in the same category as the boogeyman or leprechauns -- made up. We've been hearing for years about the huge wave of foreclosed homes just about to hit the housing market. But the numbers sure look substantial. The owners of more than 90,000 Maryland homes were at least three months behind on their payments as of the end of March, more than 40,000 of which were in the foreclosure process. Total number of homes (all homes, not just foreclosed ones)

More buyers are looking to score a deal on a foreclosure, while more Americans are worried that the foreclosed properties will lower their home values. Those are two of the highlights from a recent Realtor.com survey that illustrates how people's attitudes about foreclosures are changing. That's perhaps not too surprising, given that bank-owned properties have become commonplace in American cities in recent years. Realtor.com, the website for the National Association of Realtors, commissioned the survey, which was conducted May 4-6. The results are based on more than 1,000 interviews.