Foreclosures in Mississippi Up Dramatically

Mississippi foreclosures jumped in June. Experts say the worst may be yet to come. MPB’s Cari Gervin reports.

DeSoto County was Mississippi’s fastest growing county.

Now?

It leads the state in foreclosures.

Stacy Washington is a foreclosure counselor in Tunica. Half of her clients are DeSoto County homeowners.

She says she’s actually seen a decrease in the number of people seeking counseling since President Obama announced his Homeowner Stability Initiative. But the people Washington does see are in deep trouble – some with mortgage payments that have doubled after interest-rate resets.

“I’ll put it like this – some didn’t understand exactly about the mortgage interest rate going up, they didn’t understand it. But the others were, where they thinking that theire income would go up, or they’d have a better employment status when it does reset. And since the economy declined, that was not the case.”

In fact, across the state, Mississippi foreclosures are up 94% in the first half of 2009 – at least, according to data from California-based RealtyTrac.

Darin Blomquist says his company’s numbers are probably a little skewed, since RealtyTrac just added coverage in some parts of the state. But Blomquist says the rise in foreclosures in Mississippi is real.

“So states that weren’t seeing big increases last year are now starting to increase at a pretty fast pace. And so they may be a little bit behind the cycle. And we believe a l lot of what’s causing this is higher unemployment, which is a new factor we didn’t have really last year.”

The Mississippi unemployment rate rose again in June to 9.8 percent. Blomquist says foreclosures are expected to continue to increase, at least through the end of the year.

For MPB News, I’m Cari Gervin.