From International Herald Tribune:
The fallout from foreclosures begins to engulf middle-class communities
By Nelson D. Schwartz Published: September 2, 2007
MAPLE HEIGHTS, Ohio: Tammi and Charles Eggleston never took out a risky mortgage, never borrowed more than they could afford and never missed a monthly payment on their neat, three-bedroom colonial home in the Cleveland suburbs. But that has not prevented them from getting caught in the undertow of the subprime mortgage mess now submerging this town.
Over the last 18 months, the Egglestons have watched one house after another on their street, Gardenview Drive, end up foreclosed and vacant.
Although lawns are still tidy and empty homes are not boarded up and stripped as they are in inner-city Cleveland, the Egglestons say Maple Heights no longer feels safe after dark.
Nor do they have the confidence they had when they moved in a decade ago that this is the ideal place to raise their 6-year-old twin girls, Sydney and Shelby. So, in May 2006, they put their home on the market in order to move closer to Tammi Eggleston's parents in another middle-class Cleveland suburb, Richmond Heights.
They have had no takers. Although they lowered the asking price to $99,000 from $109,000, no one has even come to look at it in more than six weeks.
"My heart panics every time I drive down the street and I see another for-sale sign," she says, pointing past the placards in front of her porch to others that dot surrounding yards like lawn furniture. "Some people on the street couldn't pay, so they just left. The competition to sell is just ridiculous."
It is a scene being repeated in cities and towns across America as loans that were made to borrowers with little or no credit history, many of whom could not even afford a down payment, fail in ever-growing numbers.
What was once a problem confined mostly to economically struggling areas is quickly becoming a national phenomenon. Last year, there were 1.2 million foreclosure filings in the United States, up 42 percent from 2005, according to RealtyTrac, a firm that analyzes such data.
http://www.iht.com:80/articles/2007/09/02/business/town.php?WT.mc_id=newsalert
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