After years of borrowing in a sizzling housing market, more homeowners are finding themselves upside down on mortgages.
They borrowed more to buy or fix up homes than they can now afford, and a growing number are turning to short sales — selling homes for less than they owe — to unload high payments and avoid foreclosure or bankruptcy.
No organization tracks short sales, but real-estate agents, housing counselors and mortgage companies say they have been seeing more of them since the economy tanked and employers began laying off workers.
Most are the end result of delinquent mortgages — those not paid for more than 90 days — which have risen dramatically in the Seattle-Tacoma area the past three years. The number of delinquent mortgages rose 50 percent between June 2000 and July 2003, according to Loan Performance, a San Francisco firm that tracks mortgage data monthly.
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