It isn’t only loss of a job or unexpected medical debts that can cause you to get behind on your mortgage payments. The need for debt relief can also be the result of the cumulative effect of wages that just don’t keep with the high cost of housing and other expenses.
Home foreclosure in San Antonio is still a problem, three years after the recession supposedly ended. If you are behind on your payments, it makes sense to consider bankruptcy as a viable option for moving forward.
In particular, the automatic stay that comes with a bankruptcy filing can really help you get a game plan together for dealing with your debts in a responsible way that will still give you a chance for a fresh financial start.
Average people are at risk of financial trouble when they have to pay an inordinate amount of their income for housing costs. In 2010, however, over a million households in Texas were paying half of their income (or even more) for housing. Of the 1.1 million Texans in this situation, nearly 100,000 were in the greater San Antonio area.
Some of these people are homeowners with a mortgage. Others are renters. All of them are paying so much for housing that it puts them at risk of not being able to pay all of their bills on time.
It didn’t used to be this way. In San Antonio, the number of people paying more than 35 percent of their income for housing has increased by 35 percent since 1999.
Census data helps to explain part of the problem. From 1999 to 2008-2010, median household income in Texas went up only 24 percent. But housing costs went up by nearly 40 percent during that same time.
Source: “Local incomes don’t keep up with housing costs,” San Antonio Express, Joe Yenardi, 9-23-12