Palm Beach Post-- Massive area mortgage defaults--Many owners never made a payment.

Loan defaults in the area topped $1 billion over six months.
Many owners never made a payment.

By PAT BEALL

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Sunday, October 14, 2007

You don't see the paperwork. You won't see the panic. But behind doors in Palm Beach County and along the Treasure Coast, from the meanest fixer-upper to the glitziest gated community, thousands of homeowners are struggling to make the mortgage.

They are failing.

Between Jan. 1 and July 1, homeowners in Palm Beach, Martin and St. Lucie counties defaulted on 4,318 mortgages worth $1.05 billion. That's a 311 percent increase in defaults from the 1,051 recorded during the same period in 2006.

Loans in tony new communities crashed just as disastrously as homes in Counterpoint Estates, the aging middle-income subdivision just down the road from Versailles' golden gates. Condos that once generated traffic jams of eager buyers went dark. Along some streets, next-door neighbors defaulted like dominoes: Waterway Cove in Wellington; Gazetta and Cresta Way in the Terracina subdivision in West Palm Beach; Strawberry Lakes Circle west of Lake Worth; Gull Road in Palm Beach Gardens.

Dry-as-dust court filings and bumper crops of rent-to-own yard signs merely hint at how deep the problems run. The $1.05 billion would buy the net assets of Florida Atlantic University — twice. And the number of soured mortgages adds up to one for every man, woman and child in Juno Beach. Millions of dollars in mortgages collapsed before a single payment was made. Borrowers holding pre-construction loans defaulted on dirt before homes could come out of the ground.

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http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/business/epaper/2007/10/14/c1a_FORECLOSURES_MAIN_1014.html

"Everybody played a part, and no one wanted to be the one to stop the music," she said. "Well, now the music is more like a funeral dirge."

Around the world, foreign investors are considering the forclosed "American Dream'. Buying these homes on the cheap, for investments, or their own vacation homes.
Saw a small bit about this on news last week. No link since I can't recall which MSM I was watching at the time. CNN or MSNBC.

Nonetheless, more of America is about to be sold off, and US citizens are lost as the banking and lending institutions that helped create this next batch of American 'poor', eagerly wait to recoup their losses and emerge strong again.
Conspiracy theory asks if the banking industry itself created this situation from the start. Lots of money to be had by opening the doors to foreign investors.
But maybe its just the 'tin foil' in me. Why do I mistrust my shadow government?