Staying put

Housing worries rise, but there’s help

MOSES LAKE — It’s the nagging fear every homeowner has when economic times become hard: What if I can’t keep my home? That’s something quite a lot of people are worried about, said Nik VinZant, an analyst with QuoteWizard in Seattle. According to a survey done by QuoteWizard, 17% of people in Washington state are worried about losing their homes in the near future. “Basically, what we did is we looked into US Census Bureau data,” VinZant said. “This is part of the household pulse survey that goes out every couple of weeks and has been going out ever since the beginning of the pandemic. We were actually able to figure out, how many people are behind on their mortgage, how many people are behind on their rent? And then, of those people who are behind on either rent or their mortgage, how many of them feel that they should be either evicted or face foreclosure within the next two months?” That’s not to say that those people are objectively in imminent danger. The same survey showed that only 2% of Washingtonians are actually behind in mortgage payments. But sometimes, perception looms large and can help bring about the very thing people are worried about, Vinzant said...