US: Key to economic recovery: Curbing rate of foreclosures

BoyRacer · January 24, 2010, 6:36pm

Key to economic recovery: Curbing rate of foreclosures -> azcentral.com/arizonarepubli … h1024.html

Metropolitan Phoenix has been hit harder by the national housing crash than any other part of the country because of the area’s dependence on real estate.
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• Home prices plummeted more than 50 percent in two years. Foreclosures hit a record 55,000 last year.

• Home building is down 85 percent since 2005.

• More than 200,000 construction jobs have disappeared since the home-building peak; unemployment is now 9.1 percent.

• The area’s population has fallen since 2007, the first such decline since the Great Depression.**

Fallout from the housing-market crash has contributed to an anticipated state budget deficit of $3.2 billion for fiscal 2011. Phoenix’s battered housing sector must be stabilized before the region’s overall economy can be mended. And to prevent a repeat of Arizona’s painful boom-and-bust scenario, the area’s housing-dependent economic model must be overhauled.

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