The Silver Spring Penguin

ROCKVILLE — The number of home foreclosures in Montgomery County may be down, but don’t let the Repo Man catch you napping, a panel of experts spelled out Thursday for county council members.

“The best results are achieved when homeowners are reached far in advance of foreclosure,” said Roger Glendenning, an adviser to the council’s economic-development committee. ”Avoiding foreclosure is a win-win situation.”

And if one must come close to losing a home, then why not do it in Maryland? The state is a leader at beating back home foreclosures, and recent stats show a 20-percent countywide drop since the beginning of the year, Glendenning reported. In the 20910 zip code, which includes downtown Silver Spring, foreclosures during the same period dropped by nearly 30 percent.

One could chalk up those numbers to a state law passed in April. The emergency legislation keeps the foreclosure dogs at bey for 90 days after a homeowner defaults on a mortgage, and for another 45 days after an intent-to-foreclose notice is sent.

Downtown Silver Spring’s healthier housing market also could be due to that old real-estate mantra: location, location, location. Homes within the Beltway tend to sell in 30 days, while sales on upcounty homes can take up to a year, Meredith Weisel, with the Greater Capital Area Association of Realtors, told the committee.

Case in point: Parts of Germantown, Montgomery Village, and that neck of Silver Spring around Layhill and Bel Pre Roads are in serious trouble. Each of those spots logged more than 100 foreclosures in the second quarter of this year alone, Glendenning said. Parts of Gaithersburg, Wheaton and Calverton are also up a creek sans paddle.

So what’s a county to do? Hit the streets with mortgage counselors who can help homeowners renegotiate the terms of their loans, Glendenning pushed.

“Delinquent homeowners need to know they have a shoulder to lean on,” Glendenning told committee members. Pre-foreclosure counseling, he said, “is the backbone, and should be the core of what every jurisdiction looks at.”

There are just a couple of hitches to that. According to Richard Nelson, with the county’s department of housing, there aren’t enough mortgage counselors to go around. On top of that, there aren’t enough lenders willing to renegotiate with those high-risk borrowers.

To kick both problems, Nelson is hollering at Annapolis for help. Currently, the county and state have a nonbinding agreement to cover a reluctant lender’s loss up to 30 percent if it chooses to rework a mortgage. And the state might pick up the tab for more mortgage counselors, using money it gets from the feds, Nelson said.

“This whole cycle is going to continue for another 18 months,” Nelson told the committee. “But what we do won’t be money or effort wasted.”

Lead photo courtesy of Flickr user Respres.