Local Home Foreclosures on the Rise

That means he took out two loans. The first was at a fixed rate. He later refinanced it into an adjustable loan so he could pull cash out to buy a car and pay off credit cards. The second was a smaller loan to help cover the remaining cost of the house. He now pays $2,439 a month.

Frolov felt confident he could refinance the larger loan again before it adjusted in March. But the value has fallen and he owes more than it's worth, so he can't refinance.

"I can't afford to pay even a little bit more each month," said Frolov, 50. "I'm already at my limit. I've lived frugally and the mortgage was my first priority, but my salary cannot keep up with this. No way."

So Frolov is elated that his lender, Washington Mutual, is one of the financial institutions that has agreed to refinance some borrowers and freeze rates for others. Frolov figures he would benefit from either approach, but he does not know whether he qualifies.

Marian Siegel, executive director of Housing Counseling Services in the District, said she is skeptical about whether these lenders will come through for the people who qualify. But even if they do, the help probably won't come easy.

As lenders were crafting the final details of the Bush plan, Siegel said she was working with one of them on behalf of a client who was about to lose her home.

The lender agreed not to take back the home if the client paid $8,000 up front, which she did. But for two weeks leading up to the scheduled foreclosure, "we got the you'll-hear-from-us-soon mantra," Siegel said. The client was still wringing her hands the afternoon before her house was to be auctioned, when the lender finally called off the foreclosure.

Siegel suspects the lender waited until the last minute in hopes of sweating more cash out of her client. "There are psychological games being played," Siegel said. "And I'm not sure that when the loan resets again that borrower won't be in the same position."

It's probably of little consolation to that client that the foreclosure rates in the District, where she lives, were the lowest in the region. As of Nov. 30, only 22 out of every 10,000 owner-occupied D.C. homes were in foreclosure, according to the George Mason center.

At the opposite end of the spectrum are Prince William and Loudoun counties, where 262 and 219 out of every 10,000 households, respectively, were in foreclosure, said John McClain, the center's deputy director.

"In those counties, there were plenty of people engaged in speculative activity in addition to all the folks who were overextending to buy a house," McClain said. "There were so many new housing units for sale in that area that people were buying and flipping, buying and flipping."

Until they no longer could.