Housing problem leveling in Ohio

Foreclosures may flatten out.

COLUMBUS (AP) — A firm keeping tabs on foreclosure activity nationwide says the flood of filings may be leveling off in Ohio, and a lawyer helping struggling Ohio homeowners says their numbers could begin to decline within a year or two.

During the second quarter, Ohio had the nation’s sixth-highest foreclosure rate, with one out of every 134 households receiving a foreclosure-related notice, according to a report from RealtyTrac Inc.

The Irvine, Calif.-based firm said Friday that 37,689 Ohio properties entered the foreclosure process, 21 percent more than during the previous three months and up 27 percent from the same period in 2007.

Nationwide, filings more than doubled from a year ago, and those numbers are likely to keep surging, said Daren Blomquist, a RealtyTrac spokesman. “But in Ohio, that trajectory seems to be flattening out as opposed to shooting upward, like it is in California and Nevada,” he said.

In Nevada, second-quarter foreclosure filings were up 147 percent from a year ago. California foreclosure activity nearly tripled compared with the second quarter of 2007.

The shock waves from the meltdown in subprime mortgages are still rippling out, said Paul Bellamy, an attorney for the Equal Justice Foundation, a Columbus-based advocacy group that helps homeowners fighting foreclosure.

“This has been going on for about 10 years in Ohio. It started here and in the Midwest before it hit the rest of the country,” Bellamy said.

He looked for foreclosures to begin to decline in Ohio by the end of the decade — but only if the economy remains relatively stable.

“If it doesn’t, people will lose their homes — not just as a result of bad mortgages, but also because of the more traditional issues: losing their job, inflation,” Bellamy said. “That really scares me to death.”

In a rare weekend session, the U.S. Senate on Saturday gave final congressional passage to a bill meant to calm the housing market turmoil that has dragged down the economy. An estimated 400,000 homeowners would escape foreclosure by getting the chance to refinance into more-affordable loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration.

Ohio Sen. George Voinovich praised the vote.

“This bipartisan compromise is a solid step in the right direction and includes the types of immediate relief and assistance struggling homeowners have been waiting for,” Voinovich said.

President Bush is expected to sign the bill quickly, a White House official said.

The measure, regarded as the most significant housing legislation in decades, offers a temporary financial lifeline to troubled mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — pillars of the home loan market whose losses have sparked investor fears — and tightens controls over the two government-sponsored businesses.