Let's temporarily remove conjecture from the mix to deal directly with facts.
It's a generally accepted fact that 1 in every 196 U.S. households is currently in foreclosure. Notice I said households.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that there were 116,011,000 households in this country in 2006.
Using that number as the basis, simple math tells us that 591,893 U.S. households face the distinct possibility of losing their homes at this time.
A recently released study commissioned by the The United States Conference of Mayors estimates that an additional 1,400,000 residential foreclosures, at least, will occur in 2008 representing a market value of $316,000,000,000. You read it correctly, I said 316 billion dollars.
What's all this mean in practical terms? In the absence of intervention in one form or another, roughly 5,178,922 men, women, and children could lose their homes between now and the end of next year, or sometime soon thereafter.
That's a bitter pill to swallow. It's a lot of displaced people for society to somehow assimilate. A dramatic increase in rental activity doesn't seem a viable option to me. First of all, there couldn't possibly be a sufficient number of rental units available. Secondly, people who have lost their homes to foreclosure have also had their credit destroyed. Often, there are judgments obtained by creditors other than the foreclosing mortgagee. We can't assume that nearly 5.2 million displaced people would be able to live with family and friends.
Let's break it down a little further.
The numbers above represent a situation where every person living in the Washington Metropolitan Area were to almost simultaneously lose their homes. The densely populated area includes the District of Columbia, 5 Maryland counties, 9 Virginia counties, and 1 county in West Virginia.
Let's look at it another way. It's as though every person living in the Tampa - St. Petersburg Clearwater Area and the Denver - Aurora Area combined were to lose their homes.
It's the numerical equivalent to every person residing in the state of Minnesota finding themselves without a place to live.
In 2008, a citizen of this country will be 9.25 times more likely to lose their home to foreclosure than to die of cancer in any form.
I could say more, but do I really need to?
Research links used to compile statistical data for this post:
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