A statewide organization that provides classes and counseling for homeowners is eliminating foreclosure prevention from its services, a spokeswoman said Monday.
Community Housing Partners, which has an office in Virginia Beach, has offered counseling to troubled home-owners as a wave of foreclosures hit the state and Hampton Roads.
Amid the excess call volume and requests for help, the organization decided to focus just on potential and recent buyers, spokeswoman Melissa Byrd said.
"Foreclosure counseling could take up a lot of time," she said. "... But rather than giving part of our energies to several areas, we decided to focus on one area."
The group had offered a range of foreclosure prevention services, including helping homeowners negotiate loan modifications. Now it will no longer be part of the Hope Now alliance of housing counselors approved by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
"It may seem coincidental with what's going on in foreclosures," Byrd said. "It has more to do with re-creating our business model. We want to teach people how to avoid getting yourself into a foreclosure situation altogether."
Josh Brown, (757) 446-2318, josh.brown@pilotonline.com
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http://money.cnn.com/magazine
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/moneymag_realestate/2009/index.html
Money Magazine ranks Virginia Beach #13 out of 100 popular metro areas for home value declines in 2009.
Hmp
I know, I post on every housing and foreclosure article. Now for something different. A friend wrote software to analyze every post I've ever made on here (1656 posts?) and generated a tag cloud based on word use! How cool.
http://stugs.com/telecloud/
I'm surprised the bubble isn't bigger.