More from CAP's Foreclosue Mediation Series: It's Time We Talked: Mandatory Mediation in the Foreclosure Process by Andrew Jakabovics and Alon Cohen and Now We’re Talking: A Look at Current State-Based Foreclosure Mediat... by Alon Cohen and Andrew Jakabovics

Our country is now three years into a rolling housing crisis that first brought us the Great Recession and now threatens our economy’s nascent recovery. Total existing home sales dropped this summer to their lowest level since the National Association of Realtors began tracking the metric in 1999. New home sales hit a similar low, missing already conservative July estimates by more than 32 percent. Finally, the so-called “shadow inventory,” or foreclosed homes held by lenders, continues to grow.

This disheartening evidence of a still struggling housing market is bad news for our economy and for every homeowner—those who are making steady payments on their monthly mortgage, those who are struggling to do so, and those who face foreclosure on their homes, sometimes through no fault of their own. To solve a problem of this magnitude will require every tool we can muster. That includes home mortgage foreclosure mediation—when homeowners, their lenders, and their mortgage services companies (representing investors in mortgages that were bundled into mortgage-backed securities and sold worldwide) come together to talk about the best way for all parties to resolve foreclosures quickly and effectively so our housing market can recover as quickly as possible so that our economy can return to sustained growth.

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