Foreclosures Rampaging through Long Island

July 2nd, 2009 | Tags: Foreclosure

foreclosure

Foreclosures are rampaging through Long Island localities without any signs of slowing down. A street in Central Islip looks like any other with sprinkling of colonial buildings gracing tree lined blocks. A cursory look will not tell the sorry tale behind lights and curtains. There are boarded up windows and some of the houses look as if they have not been occupied for years. A big tree has fallen down in somebody’s unkempt garden while the window panes of another are broken. This is Willow Street.

What is happening here is repeated elsewhere on Long Island as the housing crisis tightens its grip on the country. The worst hit localities on Long Island have different types of houses covering a wide range of prices and demographics painting a patchwork picture of diversity.

In 2006 only one community in Long Island had about 200 foreclosures. In 2008 this number has shot up covering each corner of Long Island. Along Willow Street five houses have been marked by the stain of foreclosure – people have been evicted and banks have taken over without seeing to its maintenance. The houses are being offered for sale at heavy discounts. Twelve other houses are poised to enter the dreaded zone.

Joe Mass of Island Advantage Realty said, “Every one of these streets would probably tell you the same story. That’s the sad part.”

Lis pendens, the first stage in the foreclosure process has doubled from 2006 to 2008 according to an analysis by Newsday that takes note of foreclosures and sale of residential houses in West Islip.

From January to August 2008 the lenders filed 11,600 foreclosure notices against borrowers in Long Island. These included residential and commercial mortgages. The loan amount involved total to $4 billion. This was matched by a drop in sales indicating the collapse of the housing sector in this region.

In Long Island over half the communities saw the number of foreclosure go up by over double the figures from the first 8 months of 2006 to the first 8 months of 2008. The situation in Copiague can be held up as an example. In 2006 it had 34 foreclosures and this climbed to 138 in 2008. In Westbury during the same time slot it jumped from 77 to 231.

Foreclosures are no longer coming from the sub-prime loans but are affecting prime mortgage holders also.