<p>I read, don't know where that the number of people actually significantly helped was absolutely trivial.</p>
<p>Thing you guys aren't considering, is once the banks foreclose, so far they are not cutting prices on enough houses to start to form a bottom. they are sitting on them, and they are starting to rot. It doesn't help prospective first time home buyers if the house they would have bought is so ruined by vandals, or lack of upkeep to the point that it has to be torn down, or so ruined that only a professional contractor would be able to fix it.</p>
<p>I betcha the banks have simply forgotten about, or lost track of, a significant fraction of the the REOs. By significant, I mean 1% or more. With millions of foreclosures that is tens of thousands of literally forgotten houses.</p>