Just got off the phone with Minnesota Homeownership Center spokesman Ed Nelson, who told me about his latest post on the informative blog he writes about the work the center is doing to keep people from losing their homes.
It's about preforeclosure notices, the information that lenders are required to send homeowners about foreclosure counseling before foreclosure proceedings are started.
Looks like the foreclosure crisis is far from over.
As Nelson says, the data is "not good": Year- over-year, notices are up nearly 22 percent in the first quarter.
The center started tracking the numbers in fall of 2008, but Nelson said that the first quarter of last year is the first reliable set of numbers.
He has several other informative charts on his blog.
During our conversation, he pointed out that many of the foreclosure notices in the past three months were sent to suburban Hennepin County:
He said borrowers who come in for counseling report job loss or underemployment as the main reason why they're struggling to pay the mortgage.
