Wave of foreclosures hits LI

From Newsday:

Forestall foreclosure

A wave of mortgage defaults and foreclosures has arrived on Long Island in the wake of the collapse of the subprime mortgage market. Hit by ballooning mortgage payments, many Long Islanders – especially first-time homeowners and minority borrowers – find themselves unable to make their monthly mortgage payments and risk losing their homes.

It’s become a crisis in Nassau and Suffolk, where 12.2 percent of subprime borrowers were at least 60 days late with their mortgage payments in February, compared with 6.9 percent a year earlier. Last year, 14,284 homes were foreclosed in the two counties, ranking the region 37th among more than 200 metropolitan areas.