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The Arizona Department of Housing (ADOH) has launched a program that it hopes will help reduce the growing list of bank owned foreclosed house in the state. The Your Way Home AZ, which will be made available in 13 counties, will subsidize 22 percent of the sale price of a repo property for those who are eligible for assistance.

According to Donald E. Cardon, director of ADOH, the current rise in foreclosure homes and low interest rates are reasons enough to purchase a distressed house in Arizona.

The state’s program will subsidize 22 percent of the foreclosed property?s sale price for potential homeowners. This will give a chance for eligible Arizonans to purchase and own affordable houses and for the state to reduce its number of bank foreclosed house.

The program will be packaged as differed second mortgage loans with no interest, no monthly mortgage payment and, after a period of time, can be forgivable. Several factors that will be used as basis for a person’s eligibility for the program include ratio of debt to income, area median income, participation in a Home-buyer Education Class and the intention to use the house as primary residence.

Under the program, potential homebuyers are required to buy a repossessed single-unit detached family home, townhouse or condominium. The ADOH has allocated over $20 million to fund the assistance program.

The program was made possible by the funding under the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) of the U.S. Housing and Urban Development. The NSP was launched by the Obama Administration as part of its efforts to help stabilize communities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis.

Arizona was ranked the fourth state with the highest foreclosure rate in April. According to market data, one in every 164 homeowners received a foreclosure filing last month.

Meanwhile, the National Association of Realtors said that the average sales price of existing houses in Tucson dropped to $176,000, from $221,000 last year.

The 20 percent decline in the median home price in Tucson was less than 50 percent of the 42 percent drop in sales price in the Phoenix metropolitan area where prices languished at $129,000.

The drastic drop in median sales prices in major cities in Arizona was attributed to the increase in the number of bank foreclosed house in the real estate market.

The U.S. Senate has passed an amendment that will protect tenants of repo houses from being evicted. The amendment, Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act is part of the housing law, Help Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009.

Both Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and John Kerry have proposed the amendment which would give renters and families in the United States not less than 90 days to transfer to another home if they are leasing in repo homes.

The amendment states that renters in any residential real property or dwelling with a rent should be allowed to stay in foreclosed homes until the existing lease expires. The amendment also points out that if the buyer of repossessed homes plans to use the house as his primary residence then he could terminate the lease. However, renters must be given a 90-day notice to leave or vacate the property.

Additionally, renters with a lease that can be terminated anytime under state law or those without a lease have also the right to be given a 90-day notice to leave or vacate the property.

According to Gillibrand, over 30,000 tenants of repo properties in New York have not violated any terms of their lease and pay their rent regularly without fail. But she noted that these good paying tenants do not have any right when lending institutions or banks repossess the houses they are renting.

She added that families who have no means to quickly find temporary places to live or transfer into another housing unit were unceremoniously kicked out of their rental homes because their landlords reneged on their financial obligations.

On his part, Kerry claimed that tenants are the victims of foreclosure property crisis. He believed that renters who have not done anything wrong should not be evicted without proper notice and should be given enough time to find alternative living arrangements.

Many tenants are unaware that the houses they are renting are about to be repossessed because landlords kept them in the dark about their foreclosure problem. Some states have laws that give tenants in repo houses limited notice that they are about to be evicted.

The amendment will be of great benefit to low-income tenants who lease houses subject to foreclosure and who lack the means necessary to immediately relocate on a short notice.

Other senators who co-sponsored the amendment that protects tenants of repo homes are Harry Reid, Chris Dodd, Edward Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Richard Durbin and Jeff Merkley.

For homeowners who lost their distressed properties to foreclosure, buying them back is a dream they would always have. The dream has become a reality to some homeowners who were able to buy back their houses in foreclosure list.

And more and more homeowners in Boston, Massachusetts are starting to realize this dream as a growing number of nonprofit organizations and housing advocates are helping them buy back their foreclosed houses.

Some of these homeowners who bought back their repo properties refused to leave the premises and continue to find ways to recover their houses. With the buy back option, former owners were able to repurchase their houses at significant discounts because of the decline in real estate values.

Housing attorney Zoe K. Cronin of Greater Boston Legal Services said that nonprofit organizations are in the process of assisting and helping a lot of former homeowners buy back their foreclosed houses. She said that former owners are the priority to buy the houses in forclosure listings unless someone would be willing to purchase them at real market value.

Meanwhile, the buy back program is spearheaded by Boston Community Capital, a nonprofit with a goal to help create and develop healthy communities. Currently, it has 30 borrowers who are in the process of repurchasing their repossessed houses.

The buy back program works this way. Boston Community will purchase a foreclosed home from Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and then after several weeks, sold it back to its original owner for the amount equivalent to what the borrower owed to the bank.

Boston Community Chief Executive Officer Elyse Cherry explained that the nonprofit wants homeowners and their families to remain in their houses and stop foreclosures because vacant and abandoned properties fall into disrepair, affecting other residents in the neighborhood.

For the past 25 years, Boston Community has already invested over $423 million to assist and help low-income neighborhoods across the United States.

Organizations like Boston Community are a great help to former homeowners because with damaged credit, they find it difficult to purchase a new house or repurchase their old houses.

The buy back program is one of the efforts undertaken to reduce the number of houses in foreclosure listings in Massachusetts. In 2008, the state?s foreclosure rates increased to 12,430, representing a 62 percent rise from 2007.