Foreclosures surge 48 percent in May

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By By ALAN ZIBEL

WASHINGTON (AP) Soaring foreclosures are continuing to raise questions about the mortgage industry's claims that lenders are making a dent in the housing crisis.

Foreclosure filings last month were up nearly 50 percent compared with a year earlier. Nationwide, 261,255 homes received at least one foreclosure-related filing in May, up 48 percent from 176,137 in the same month last year and up 7 percent from April, foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. said Friday.

The latest grim foreclosure news comes as criticism mounts that efforts by government and the mortgage industry to stem the tide of foreclosures aren't keeping up with the rising number of troubled homeowners. Critics say a Bush administration-backed mortgage industry coalition, dubbed Hope Now, is falling far short.

"It's clear that these voluntary efforts in and of themselves cannot really make a dent," said Allen Fishbein, director of credit and housing policy at the Consumer Federation of America. "Government intervention is going to be necessary."

Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody's Economy.com and an adviser to Republican John McCain's presidential campaign, wrote earlier this week that "the Bush administration's efforts to encourage loan modifications and delay foreclosures are being completely overwhelmed."

A Credit Suisse report from this spring predicted that 6.5 million loans will fall into foreclosure over the next five years, reaching more than 8 percent of all U.S. homes.

Sobering statistics like these are leading to more calls for government intervention, especially from lawmakers pushing a plan for the government to guarantee as much as $300 billion in new loans to help borrowers refinance into cheaper, fixed-rate mortgages.

A new government report released Wednesday found that among mortgages held by nine large banks, including Bank of America and Citigroup Inc., foreclosures climbed to 1.23 percent of all loans in March from 0.9 percent in October.

In a speech, Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan said the federal agency conducted its own examination of foreclosures and loan modifications after finding "significant limitations" with data collected by trade groups like Hope Now.

"Virtually none of the data had been subjected to a rigorous process to check for consistency and completeness," Dugan said. "They were typically responses to surveys that produced aggregate, unverified results from individual firms."