When census workers hit the streets in coming weeks to reach residents who have not returned their 2010 surveys, they’ll knock on doors of a lot of empty homes.

The foreclosure crisis is going to make it much harder to count Americans this year because many homes that were occupied 18 to 24 months ago are now vacant, say officials with the U.S. Census Bureau.

According to Alpharetta-based Equity Depot, which tracks foreclosures, notices in the 13-county metro Atlanta area hit a monthly record of 12,568 in March, up 24 percent compared with the same period last year. While that number includes both residential and commercial foreclosures, the overwhelming majority were residential.

Complicating matters will be where the former owners of those foreclosed homes have landed. They often are staying with relatives or friends who might not know that they should count them as part of their household, or in some cases are not willing to.

“In areas with a lot of foreclosures, we are doing a lot of special outreach to say, ‘If you are doubled up … the only way we’re going to count them is if you count them,’ ” Census Bureau director Robert Groves told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a recent interview.

The inability to count the former residents of foreclosed homes could have a significant impact on metro Atlanta. Beyond knowing how many people actually live in the United States, the decennial census determines the allocation of more than $400 billion in annual federal funds based on population. The larger the number of residents, the more money that flows from Washington for such things as day care programs, new bridges and law enforcement.

Metro Atlanta, like many large communities, also will be faced with addresses that were never occupied in the first place, experts said. Atlanta’s Peachtree Street is lined with empty condos and the suburbs are littered with “stove-pipe” subdivisions, so called because of the plumbing that sticks out of the ground for houses that were never built.

“You’ve got addresses for all of those units that were never built, much less ever occupied,” said Jim Skinner, a research planner for the Atlanta Regional Commission.

To get as accurate a count as possible, enumerators will go to houses multiple times, Groves said.

“Our folks in May through July will go to every vacant house,” he said. “We’ll knock on every door, we’ll ask neighbors. Sometimes we’ll have to go back three or four times. We’ll spend money on vacant houses because we can’t put up with uncertainty about that.”

Andy Carswell, an associate professor in housing and consumer economics at the University of Georgia, said it is critical that the numbers come out right. Programs like community development block grants, for instance, depend on numbers to make the case of need.

“If you are talking about one or two missed counts, you’re talking about a lot of money,” he said.

The transient nature of the economy also worries him, Carswell said. If some people leave with the intention of returning, they won’t be counted here and that will mean less money for metro Atlanta.

“What we’re talking about is a residential situation that is in flux,” he said. “You want to get as accurate a picture as you can get, but it will be difficult.”

ajc.com

Website: www.helenoliveri.com
Blogs: www.helenoliveri.com/blog
Linked-In: www.linkedin.com/in/helenoliveri
Twitter: www.twitter.com/helenoliveri
Active Rain: www.activerain.com/helenoliveri

March 17 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration is inflating the success of programs that prevent foreclosures by skewing data on loan modifications and revising the goals, according to House Republicans.

Reports on the Home Affordable Modification Program are “glossing over disappointing results” by counting temporary changes toward the goal of permanent relief for as many as 4 million borrowers, said a letter sent yesterday to Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner by Republican representatives Darrell Issa and Jim Jordan.

HAMP was designed last year to curb record foreclosures after housing markets began to collapse in 2007. About 2.82 million U.S. homeowners lost their properties to foreclosure in 2009 and 4.5 million filings are expected in 2010, according to RealtyTrac Inc., the Irvine, California-based seller of default data.

Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said the goal has “always been for offers extended to borrowers,” rather than the number completed. “This has been misreported for the past year and, while we have done our best to clarify for the public, the goal post has never moved,” Reilly said in an e-mail.

Lynn Turner, the former Securities and Exchange Commission chief accountant, said Treasury’s approach “seems to have taken a page out of the accounting manuals at Enron and Lehman,” referring to accounting disputes that accompanied two of history’s biggest financial collapses. “It has become the culture of Washington and Wall Street, and they reinforce one another.”

Turner, now a managing director at forensic accounting firm LECG LLC, is a Democrat who served under former President Bill Clinton.

Trial Plans

Issa, from California, is the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and has helped drive investigations of the Treasury’s role in bailouts for Bank of America Corp. and American International Group Inc. Ohio’s Jordan is the ranking Republican on the panel’s Domestic Policy Subcommittee.

Lenders led by Bank of America, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, and New York-based JPMorgan Chase & Co. successfully converted 168,708 trial plans into permanent loan revisions as of Feb. 28, the Treasury said in a March 12 HAMP report. More than 835,000 additional borrowers were in trial repayment plans, Treasury said.

“Rather than acknowledge the program’s failure, Treasury is trying to confuse the American people by counting HAMP’s higher number of temporary modifications — fewer than one-third of which are successfully converting to permanent ones — toward the goal,” the letter reads.

Definition of Success

Treasury’s Phyllis Caldwell, chief of the Homeownership Preservation Office, told lawmakers last month that the program was designed to give homeowners the “opportunity for a mortgage modification, not a permanent modification.”

Trial modifications shouldn’t be the standard, said Moshe Orenbuch, a Credit Suisse Group AG bank analyst in New York.

“Success of the program should be measured by the amount of borrowers who get permanent loan relief and avoid foreclosure,” Orenbuch said.

Wells Fargo & Co., the nation’s top mortgage lender, today became the second bank to agree to also modify home-equity loans as part of the program. The option will be available to borrowers who successfully complete a modification on their first mortgage through HAMP, according to a statement from the San Francisco-based company.

By Dawn Kopecki

Website: www.helenoliveri.com
Blogs: www.helenoliveri.com/blog
Linked-In: www.linkedin.com/in/helenoliveri
Twitter: www.twitter.com/helenoliveri
Active Rain: www.activerain.com/helenoliveri

The Federal Reserve decided Tuesday to keep its benchmark interest rate near zero, reinforcing a commitment that rates should stay at record lows as the nation grapples with high unemployment and tight credit.

Concluding a one-day policy meeting, the Federal Open Market Committee said the target rate for overnight loans between banks would remain in the zero-to-0.25 percent range “for an extended period.”

“Household spending is expanding at a moderate rate but remains constrained by high unemployment, modest income growth, lower housing wealth and tight credit,” the Fed said in a statement.

Although it didn’t raise rates or signal that higher rates are coming, the Fed’s assessment of the economy was more upbeat than in its January statement. Committee members said the labor market is stabilizing, business spending has risen significantly and inflation is likely to remain subdued for some time.

Rates have hovered at record lows since December 2008 as the U.S. struggles to recover from the most severe downturn since the Great Depression.

Thomas Hoenig, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, opposed the decision for the second meeting in a row. Keeping rates near zero, he warned, “could lead to a buildup of financial imbalances.”

Hoenig’s dissent illustrates the Fed’s challenge in deciding when to signal that higher rates are coming.

The Fed also confirmed plans to phase out some of the programs put in place to pump liquidity into the banking system. By the end of the month, it will stop buying mortgage-backed securities. But it left the door open to reactivating the programs if the economy deteriorates.

Job Growth Outlook Remains Weak

Meanwhile, the Obama administration said Tuesday that while companies are expected to add about 100,000 jobs a month for the remainder of the year, it’s not enough to change the unemployment rate.

Testifying before the House Appropriations Committee, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, White House Budget Director Peter Orszag and top economic adviser Christina Romer said February’s 9.7 percent unemployment rate isn’t likely to improve until 2011 and 2012.

The United States has weathered the worst of the economic decline, they said, but unemployment remains a challenge. The national joblessness rate held at 9.7 percent last month.

“Although the rate of job loss has slowed dramatically, job gain has not yet begun, and the administration will not be satisfied until the many Americans seeking work can find it,” Geithner, Romer and Orszag told lawmakers in a joint statement Tuesday.

The trio warned that the jobless rate might even rise in the coming months. They said they don’t foresee job growth until the fourth quarter of 2011, when unemployment is expected to hit 8.9 percent. The jobless rate could fall to 7.9 percent by the end of 2012, they predicted.

Home Construction Falls

The Fed’s decision came hours after the Commerce Department released a report on home construction, which was a huge factor in the economic downturn.

Construction of new homes fell 5.9 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 575,000 units in February, slightly higher than the 570,000 that economists were expecting.

Activity dropped by 9.6 percent in the Northeast and 15.5 percent in the South — both regions hit hard by snowstorms. Construction rose by 10.6 percent in the Midwest and 7.9 percent in the West.

Building permits, considered a good barometer of future activity, fell 1.6 percent to an annual rate of 612,000 units after a 4.7 percent drop in January.

Some economists blamed the drop in housing starts on the snowstorms that paralyzed much of the country during February, but others said the glut of foreclosures on the market hampered demand.

David Crowe, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders, said the inventory of new homes is at its lowest level since 1971.

“The builders are still competing against a lot of distressed sales, foreclosures and short sales and so forth,” Crowe said. He added that builders are likely to remain cautious until more troubled properties work their way through the system.

From NPR’s Deborah Tedford, Jim Zarroli and Tamara Keith, with additional material from The Associated Press

Website: www.helenoliveri.com
Blogs: www.helenoliveri.com/blog
Linked-In: www.linkedin.com/in/helenoliveri
Twitter: www.twitter.com/helenoliveri
Active Rain: www.activerain.com/helenoliveri

65 N. Tournament Dr., Hawthorn Woods, IL 60047 | Real Estate Virtual Flyer by VirtuallyShow.com

65 N. Tournament Dr., Hawthorn Woods, IL 60047 Exceptional 4 Bedroom Home Details Price: $659,000 MLS: 07470787 Type: For Sale Bedrooms: 4 Bathrooms: 2.1 Sq. Footage: 0 Year Built: 2005 Description Beautiful “Columbia” model in Hawthorn Woods Country Club! This home is set on a lovely corner lot and has luscious views. With lots of living space this home features 4 bedrooms including 2.5 baths & 3 car garage. Home boasts 2-story foyer & family room with wood burning fireplace with gas starter and granite surround. Spacious unfinished lower level with walk out to exterior and rough-in for future bath. High end mechanicals with 2 furnaces, zoned heat and air. Large cook’s kitchen includes Cherry stained cabinets, large island with granite breakfast bar, Bosch and Thermador stainless steel appliances, hardwood floors, granite counters, tile backsplash and closet pantry. Plush upgraded carpet and pad in living, dining, family room, and all upstairs bedrooms area. Master bath dual shower with tile, Jacuzzi Tub & upgraded maple vanities in all baths. Bright study with plush carpet and wood window treatments throughout the home add terrific ambiance. Alarmed home with home audio and speaker system carefully thought out. Finally, an in-ground sprinkler system, patio with brick pavers and fire-pit make for perfect outdoor relaxation. Neutral décor to customize and create your own color palette! Resort style living in a fabulous upper scale community. View Tour and Information at: http://www.virtuallyshow.com/6230 Helen Oliveri The Helen Oliveri Team of Keller Williams Realty Office: 847-967-0022 Mobile: 847-967-0044 Email: helen@helenoliveri.com Website: www.helenoliveri.com All information is deemed reliable but is not guaranteed and should be Independently verified.