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Homeowners in trouble now have an option other than flat-out losing their house and being evicted through the process of a foreclosure. It’s come about as the result of federal officials and mortgage industry leaders combining their brain power to find ways of getting distressed homeowners to leave the domiciles they are not paying for, without the costly and ugly process of foreclosure and subsequent eviction.

What do you do when you are so upside down on your mortgage that the entire situation seems completely hopeless? Do you continue mailing in a mortgage payment that you can ill afford in this economy, essentially throwing away money that you can’t hope to get back, or do you walk away from the whole situation? Many American homeowners in distress are choosing the latter – enough to constitute something of a disturbing national trend.

In the current, distressed state of the American housing climate, the rate of bankruptcy filings is approaching an all-time high. It seems that everyone knows somebody losing their house. It’s a terrible and sometimes scary situation, true, but for many the home loss associated with a foreclosure is something of an end to a terrible chapter in their own life story. The massive financial headache is over, and life can at least go back to normal… right? Not so fast. You might THINK that you are off the hook from your sinking mortgage when you hand over the keys to the property, but that is not always the case.

According to a news report released this week, residential foreclosures in the state of New Jersey skyrocketed in the past year to make the Garden State one of the worst in the nation. According to Realty/Trac, a real estatet statistics firm, New Jersey’s foreclosure rate was up an astronomical twenty-nine percent from 2008 to 2009, with counties in the southern part of the state taking some of the hardest losses. Commercial foreclosures did far worse, rising sixty-eight percent in the past twelve months.

Once upon a time, it might have been easier to buy a quarter-million dollar home than to rent an apartment. Around the middle of the last decade, the combination of ridiculously low lending standards and high demand for rented housing meant that apartment vacancies were low, and landlords could command top dollar for their properties. But oh, how the times have changed.

A New Jersey-based mortgage modification company has told a judge that it will discontinue doing business with consumers in the state of Idaho. A Legal Newsline report out of Boise broke the news of a settlement between state Attorney General Lawrence Wasden and Best Interest Rate Mortgage Company LLC on behalf of twelve complaining homeowners.

Bank of America, the nation’s second-largest credit card provider, will be welcoming a new chief executive officer this week. It’s hard to say if there has ever been a time of more upheaval and drastic change in the industry at the point when a new chief has come aboard a major American bank. There’s no doubt that Brian Moynihan will have his hands full when he takes the reins officially next week, after having been hired for the job back in August. The bank’s credit card business faces an uncertain future with the introduction of many new laws affecting the industry, and Moynihan has had to acknowledge his employer’s responsibility in creating so many of the problems that led to the changes.

A law professor from the University of Arizona recently published a highly controversial study on troubled home mortgages. Brent White went so far as to say that sinking homeowners should give serious thought to just walking away from their obligation, a view that has had him under fire for the better part of the last holiday week. It’s not that homeowners should blindly turn their back on their legal responsibilities, White disputes.

What we call “zoning” for school placement in the United States is referred to as “catchment” on the other side of the pond. And it seems that parents will pay dearly to secure the prime catchment for their beloved babies. At the highest end of the scale, this means that some parents are paying as much as eight thousand pounds more for homes close to educational facilities that are considered to be superior, give the average home price across the nation.

For a little while there, it looked like the desperately struggling American housing market may have been experiencing some relief. Today, the closely watched Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index showed home prices falling again, following a marginal and brief rise during the months of September and October. The index follows home prices in twenty major metro areas throughout the United States, including Boston, Charlotte, New York, and Seattle.