Update from the Foreclosure-Based Economy 0

Philly dot com takes a look at foreclosures in Willingboro, N. J., one of the original Levittowns.

The foreclosure market is still going strong:

The statistics are overwhelming. About two homes a week there were lost last year in sheriff’s sales, the final and most extreme event in a foreclosure. So many people are unable to avoid foreclosure, through mediation or the private sale of their homes, that Willingboro houses accounted for 20 percent of all sheriff’s sales in 2010 in Burlington County.

In 2005, 209 foreclosure actions were filed against homeowners in Willingboro. In 2006, when the crisis hit, the number shot up 34 percent to 281, according to an analysis from American Foreclosures Inc., a firm that collects detailed foreclosure data.

Since 2005, about 2,400 foreclosures have been filed in the township of 12,000 homes, according to the analysis.

I am going to predict that the foreclosure segment of the economy is starting to weaken and that jobs created by the need to process foreclosures may be in jeopardy.

Why? Because I am starting to see commercials on television inviting Joe and Jane Viewer to call this number! or click that website! to learn how they, too, can get in on the foreclosure bonanza and pick up a houses for “as little as $1,000.00!”

I think this is the foreclosure-based economy’s equivalent to all those mailings we used to get from CountryWide and AmeriQuest, inviting us to jump on the mortgage-go-round.

Foreclosure entrepreneurs are running out of a market; they need to drum up new marks.

No doubt this will be followed by shows on cable channels with names like, “Flip This Foreclosure.” Other, lesser cable channels will follow with clones. Viewers by the twos and threes will drive ratings.

After a couple of years, pundits will start to wonder whether there is a “foreclosure bubble” that has become unsustainable.

Other pundits will argue that “God ain’t making no more foreclosures,” so the market for foreclosures should continue to thrive and grow.

And then–well, you know.

Crash.

This time, though, no one will become unemployed and homeless, because everyone who is not a CEO or hedge fund manager already will be living in tent cities and begging at freeway exits.

Coming up:

The emerging new market in tricked-out shopping carts: the latest rage in tent cities.

And a new show on the latest trend to help families make ends meet: Pimp My Bride.