Foreclosures To Hit An All Time Record In 2009 For The Second Consecutive Year

What a mess the U.S. housing market is!  RealtyTrac has announced that foreclosure filings in the U.S. will establish an all time record for the second consecutive year in 2009.  A record 3.9 million notices will be sent to homeowners in default by the time the year ends.  Never before has there been a time when so many Americans were in need of foreclosure help.  RealtyTrac also announced that foreclosure filings exceeded 300,000 for the ninth straight month in November.  The truth is that millions of Americans are losing their homes and the foreclosure epidemic is not showing any signs of abating any time soon.  Millions more American families will be facing foreclosure in 2010 unless the U.S. economy makes a miraculous recovery - and the odds of that happening are somewhere between slim and none.

It wasn't as if 2008 was not bad enough for foreclosures.  In 2008, foreclosure filings set a record with a total of 3.2 million.  But now 2009 is going to shatter that record.

"We are a long way from a recovery," John Quigley, economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, said during a recent interview. "You can’t start to see improvement in the housing market until after unemployment peaks."

So which areas of the U.S. are being hit the hardest by this foreclosure crisis?

Well, California and Florida are total nightmares, but Nevada is being hit the worst.  In November, Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate in the United States for the 35th consecutive month.  The real estate market there defies description.  Some real estate developments are virtual ghost towns with foreclosure signs up all over the place.

If you have a foreclosure story that you would like to share, we would love to hear from you.  You can share your story by filling out the comments section below....