Home loan defaults rose nearly 14% in the last quarter from the previous quarter, research group RealtyTrac said Friday in a sign of deepening housing woes. According to RealtyTrac, on a yearly basis, home loan defaults and foreclosure filings increased 121%  from the same period in 2007.  Home loan defaults have rose to their worst levels in decades as the housing crisis continues with soaring energy costs and dropping property values.  To make matters worse, unemployment and inflation continue on the rise.  Many homeowners continue report increased difficulties to refinance their adjustable rate mortgage loans into a lower fixed rate payment that works with their shrinking budgets. 

RealtyTrac said that foreclosure filings were reported on 739,714 US properties during the second quarter.  Real estate data company reported in their survey, that 1 out of every 171 US households had received a foreclosure filing and the distress and sentiment was nationally.  In addition, the report noted that 48 of the 50 states and 95 of the 100 major city regions had experienced year-over-year increases in foreclosure activity.  “Although much of the fallout from loan modifications and foreclosures comes from rampant activity in a few states, such as Nevada, California, Florida, Ohio, Arizona and Michigan, most areas of the country are seeing at least some increase in foreclosure activity,” said RealtyTrac chief executive James Saccacio said in a statement.  Nevada, California, Arizona and Florida, where home prices soared for many years before the collapse of the US housing market in 2006, led the country in foreclosures. Nevada has been hit the worse, with 1 in 43 households reporting a home loan default which is almost four times higher than the average foreclosure rate reported nationally.

With recently passed Mortgage Rescue Bill and affordable FHA home loans, many real estate experts believe that we have already hit the bottom and that a recovery has begun.  Only time will tell, but industry insiders maintain that it will be critical for the Federal Reserve to hold off as long as possible from raising key interest rates that have a significant impact on FHA mortgage rates and available home loan products from FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Home mortgage applications dropped last week as purchases and refinance loan volume slowed and mortgage interest rates likely rose slightly, according to a weekly report published Wednesday morning by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The MBA’s market composite index lowered to 621.6 for the week ended May 16, a drop of 7.8% from one week earlier.

The home loan application index is calibrated to March 16, 1990; a reading of 621.6 means that application activity was roughly 6.2 times greater than when the index was first established.  Refinancing activity, usually the driver of overall application volume, fell 8.7% as mortgage rates appeared to have inched higher; the MBA said that average rates on a 30-year fixed rate mortgages rose 8 basis points during last week. Purchase application activity — usually used by economists to predict the direction of the housing market — feel 6.9%.

Surprisingly, FHA loan application activity took a sharp dip as well, falling 6.8%; the drop was one of the few weekly decreases posted for FHA applications so far this year.  The share of variable-rate mortgages as a portion of overall application activity continued to rise as well, hitting its first double-digit total this year at 10.0%, the MBA said.  For more information, visit  http://www.mortgagebankers.org