ELYRIA — The foreclosure crisis is only getting worse in Lorain County.Through the end of May, a record 1,009 foreclosures have been filed, county Clerk of Courts Ron Nabakowski said Thursday. In the first five months of 2007, 933 foreclosures were filed.

In 2004, the figure was 584 in the same period.

Nabakowski doesn’t see the trend changing.

“The crisis won’t be over for a couple years,” he said.

With the burst of the housing bubble, slumping home sales and dropping home values in a troubled economy, more and more people are struggling to make their payments on the adjustable rate mortgages they got at the height of the housing boom a few years ago.

Lorain County foreclosures
City	Foreclosures	Households	Ratio
Sheffield Lake	129	2,768	1 in 21
Lorain	750	28,231	1 in 38
Amherst	112	4,553	1 in 41
Elyria	514	23,888	1 in 46
North Ridgeville	187	8,913	1 in 48
SOURCE: LORAIN COUNTY AUDITOR

“It’s a perfect storm,” said Dianna Marrero-Pinto, assistant director of housing and community development at the Lorain County Community Action Agency.

Hardest-hit in the county is Sheffield Lake, Nabakowski said.

The national average is one foreclosure for every 201 households, he said. In Sheffield Lake, the rate is one in 21. In the entire county, Nabakowski said, the rate is one foreclosure for every 51 households.

Despite the grim news, people can still save their homes, Nabakowski said.

The first step if someone finds themselves having trouble making their house payments, he said, is to contact the lending institution and try to work out a way to avoid foreclosure. Given the tough times banks and credit companies are facing, he said many are willing to renegotiate.

If that doesn’t work, Nabakowski said various organizations, including LCCAA, are willing to work with homeowners to find a way to save their homes.

Marrero-Pinto said the agency also is working with the city of Lorain to create a program to buy homes and rehabilitate them before selling them again.

It’s a good idea, Marrero-Pinto said, because in many cases, vacant homes are looted for valuables before they can be resold, dropping their value even further.

“A lot of these homes are in dire need of repair,” she said.

And if a foreclosure lawsuit is filed against a homeowner, Nabakowski encourages the homeowner to hire an attorney to at least reply to the lawsuit on their own and tell the judge their side of the story.

“Just because a foreclosure is filed doesn’t mean a foreclosure should be filed,” he said.

The current foreclosure crisis could also be a prelude to a problem for schools, which receive the bulk of property taxes, Nabakowski said.

Sheffield-Sheffield Lake Schools Treasurer Don Breon said the district’s revenue from property taxes, which accounts for about half the district’s $19 million annual budget, is actually up this year, from about $9.6 million last year to $9.9 million this year.

That will likely change, he said, because property taxes are actually paid a year behind. Once the foreclosures start catching up, it could mean problems.

“If there’s foreclosures, there’s going to be delinquent taxes, and that’s going to have an impact on our revenue,” he said. “… those properties sell for considerably less than fair market value, and by law the sale price is considered the fair market value.”

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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