Foreclosure Process in Virginia

The state of Virginia has one of the fastest acting foreclosure processes in the United States and is expected to suffer a hard blow to foreclosure activity. Approximately 1 in 33 homes in Virginia will suffer foreclosures through 2010. Unfortunately, even though 23 percent of all loans made were subprime, the foreclosure issue is expected to affect as many as 43 percent of the state’s homeowners due to a decrease in property value. About half of the properties in the state will see a reduction in value.

In addition, it’s expected that there will be a $7 billion loss from both state and local tax base combined.

According to Realtytrac, Virginia is the fifteenth in the nation experiencing foreclosures. Counseling has been setup across the state but walk-ins are not guaranteed a face to face meeting. Most families are experiencing a financial stress which makes them want to deny their issues and do not seek help immediately, thus the counseling sessions might be too little too late. About 70 percent of homeowners in trouble usually do not seek help because they are in denials, or are embarrassed about their situation…or do not know where to get help.

If gone uncontested, foreclosures in Virginia can occur in about 90 days with no right of redemption (unlike other states in the nation). New York and Massachusetts is considering legislation to stall foreclosures and New York has even one of the longest foreclosure processes taking over a year, at about 445 days.

Virginia isn’t aggressively defending itself against the huge blow to the local and state government tax base. When the values go down, thus will the tax base.

Unfortunately Virginia, is high on the light of mortgage fraud states and their citizens are not being protected when the FBI is on the tails of digging up many financial crimes focused on mortgage ‘rescue scams’.