April 15th — Tax Day, and More

Okay, so today is April 15th, tax day. Yuck. Sorry. I didn’t do it.

Turning to the world of real estate news, the foreclosure numbers for March are up — again. According to RealtyTrac.com, “foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 234,685 properties nationwide during the month, a 5 percent increase from the previous month and a 57 percent increase from March 2007.”

These numbers mean that one in every 538 U.S. households received a foreclosure filing during the month.

If you’ll recall, for the past year or so various sages, economists and columnists have said we are near the bottom of the real estate market – and then the next month or the next quarter looks even worse.

Wachovia disclosed yesterday a massive write-down, in large measure to be better positioned for the future. This is both smart and realistic, an effort, says the bank, to “fortify our balance sheet against continued instability in the housing and capital markets.”

If the Nation’s fourth-largest bank is preparing for a rough year, what about the rest of us? Now is the time to pay down bills, pay off credit cards, reduce monthly expenses and live much within our means.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 15th, 2008 at 3:17 am and is filed under Reverse Mortgage . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.