New ticker conveys foreclosure problem's urgency

There´s a new feature on the Center for Responsible Lending´s Website: A ticker counting foreclosures. The CRL claims a new foreclosure occurs once every 13 seconds. The ticker is housed in a big red box on the upper left hand corner of the page and it is counting the foreclosures since Jan. 1. As I write this, the count is around 237,000.

CRL bases this statistic on extrapolations from Mortgage Bankers Association estimates, and the organization has concluded that 2.4 million foreclosures could occur this year.

It doesn´t sound like the most reliable way to track foreclosures, since it´s based on estimates from existing data. And with most of the banking agencies producing load mod and foreclosure metrics of their own, the CRL´s ticker will serve more of a symbolic purpose. It is a constant reminder of one of the most important components of the financial crisis; a deeply damaging problem that must be fixed-fast.