Foreclosing Foreclosure: Escaping the Yawning Abyss of the Deep Mortgage and Housing Crisis

In 2007, Rick Sharga, vice president of marketing at RealtyTrac, stated that withmore stringent lending and underwriting standards, “we will likely see a significantforeclosure decrease”1 within the next three years. However, a sustained andconsiderable decrease in foreclosures has yet to occur. In fact, the real estate marketdownfall and resulting mortgage and housing crisis have proven to be wider, deeper, andmore serious than first anticipated. Since 2007, millions of homeowners faced, andcontinue to face, foreclosure proceedings.2 To provide protections for homeowners,federal and state actors have attempted regulatory and legislative solutions to stem theforeclosure crisis. The attempted regulatory and legislative responses, such asforeclosure moratoria, have failed to pull the real estate housing market out of crisis andprovide meaningful relief to homeowners facing foreclosure.3 Many factors contribute to this failure, but namely, lack of uniform rules and policies among the relevant federaland state agencies for lenders, homeowners, and servicers. This Article contends that,with the rate of foreclosures predicted to steadily continue into 2015,4 the need forstandardized intervention remains imperative to sustain the goal of home ownership,safeguard consumers, guide lenders and servicers, and stabilize the real estate market