I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
Saginaw County has seen a decrease in foreclosures for the first part of the year, according to The Saginaw News.
When asked by Michigan Messenger earlier this week about foreclosure rates, counties across the state reported varied increases and decreases in foreclosure filings.
According to The News:
Saginaw County’s rate of foreclosed properties slowed the first six months of the year, totaling 421 foreclosed homes from January to June. That’s down from a high of 601 the same time last year and 534 for the same period in 2007. The first six months of 2006 also tallied 421 foreclosures, when the housing crisis erupted.
The number of homes where people just walked away from the mortgage and the property has also decreased:
The deeds office recorded 123 affidavit of abandonments for the first six months of the year, compared to 195 for the same period last year and 120 the year prior. That means people walked away from their homes and a mortgages, she said.
But experts in Saginaw say that despite the decrease in foreclosures, the crisis in that county is not over.
Dean M. Boivin, sales manager with Weichert Realtors Town and Country, tells The News the decrease is the result of moratoriums put in place earlier this year by mortgage lenders, but:
“You’re going to see an influx of new foreclosures at the end of the summer,” he said.
State Rep. Andy Coulouris, a Saginaw Democrat, sponsored the Home Foreclosure Prevention Act which went into effect July 5, and he said every home owner facing foreclosure would benefit from the new law, which creates a 90-day cooling-off period where lenders and borrowers can renegotiate terms of troubled mortgages.
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