After a year or more of more or less allowing homeowners to lose their homes to foreclosure, banks have begun too take the steps to decrease this reckless trend by giving homeowners a little break and making some modifications. Last month lenders helped to prevent 239,000 foreclosures by modifying existing loans and placing a freeze on foreclosures through the holidays.

There is a concern that with an increase of unemployment that these loan modifications won’t help, as people will be unable to make any payments.

Housing prices continue to fall as everyone searches for the bottom. There has been record decreases in housing prices according to Standard & Poors.Case -Shiller Index of home prices in 20 metro areas was down nearly 20%. In Orange and Los Angeles Counties prices were down 27%. Although there is no clear sign of the bottom one would think that it has to be near.

Dave Brown a home builder from Tempe, Arizona has found himself in trouble with the bank, but not for typical reasons. He had not missed a single payments on his loans, but recently the bank concerned with the drop in revenue suddenly demanded millions of dollars in additional collateral.

Dave has been unable to keep up with the new monetary request the bank has required of him and he now has had five of his developments foreclosed on, and his business of 33 years has been forced to close. Desperate times call for desperate measures for the banks.