Inside the 1,900-square-foot house they built in 1968 for $110,000, and recently assessed by the town at $915,700, G. Stewart Baird Jr., 80, and his wife, Martha, 77, were in despair.
Their home and the lovely spot where it sits - 3.9 acres of woods overlooking the Charles River in one of Boston’s nicest bedroom communities - was scheduled to be sold at auction that afternoon.
Perhaps most on edge on Feb. 12 was the couple’s 51-year-old daughter, Laurie, who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. The house was built primarily on one level with her disability in mind, the Bairds say, when she was 10 years old.
How did this suburban family get to the brink of losing their home?
“I guess we were just hoping things would turn around,’’ said Martha Baird, who is retired from teaching modern dance.
The state’s foreclosure crisis has slowly spread to its wealthier suburbs. Although the number of foreclosure auctions fell statewide last year, more suburban homes may be at risk as the number of foreclosure petitions - the first formal step of the complex legal process - continues to rise, according to analysts at the Warren Group, which tracks real estate data across New England.
In Norfolk County, foreclosure petitions jumped by 33.5 percent between 2008 and last year, although the number of auctions taking place dropped by 17.4 percent, from 1,293 in 2008 to 1,068 last year, the Warren Group reported. That means as more suburbanites were entering the foreclosure process, others who entered the process earlier had found ways to save their homes from an auction sale. Last year’s federal foreclosure-prevention program as well as individual loan renegotiations between homeowners and banks are most likely contributing factors to forestalling auctions, said Dave Turcotte, director of the Institute for Housing Sustainability at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
The average Massachusetts foreclosure takes 330 days from initial petition to resolution, Turcotte said, so there can be many stops and starts in the process.
But the rise in foreclosure petitions is a sign that the foreclosure crisis has yet to abate. Turcotte predicted foreclosure auction levels in the region would likely rise in the coming year to reflect the jump in the numbers of homes just starting the foreclosure process.
Likewise, in Middlesex County, the petition filings rose by more than 23 percent during the same time period, while auctions dropped by nearly 10 percent, from 3,220 to 2,904.
Unemployment levels - reported by the state Office of Labor and Workforce Development to be 9.1 percent statewide in December - are directly related to the risk of foreclosure for homeowners because it puts them in greater financial jeopardy, according to Turcotte, who also is coeditor of the monthly Merrimack Valley Housing Report newsletter.Continued...
“What’s driving most of the foreclosures now is the economy, people losing jobs or people not able to meet their monthly expenses and can’t make their mortgage payments,’’ he said. People had used their homes as “piggy banks,’’ taking out larger and larger mortgages on their homes when it seemed housing values would always continue to grow, he said.
In Greater Lowell, foreclosure activity of all types is up 500 percent from January 2009 to last month, he said. “We have entire ZIP codes that have negative equity. In towns [like Dover] it tends to be people who are under water,’’ said Turcotte, referring to the state in which a mortgage is more than a property is worth in the current real estate market.
Foreclosure in Dover is a relatively unusual phenomenon, but it - like foreclosure activity across the region - has increased in the past year. There were only five foreclosure petitions filed by lenders in 2008, but that number more than tripled to 17 in 2009, according to the Warren Group.
Numbers also crept up in other affluent suburbs west of Boston.
In Concord, foreclosure petitions increased 20 percent, from 15 in 2008 to 18 in 2009. In Carlisle, they jumped 266 percent, from three in 2008 to 11 in 2009. The town of Lincoln saw no residential foreclosure petitions in 2008, but five were recorded in 2009, the Warren Group said.
Foreclosure auctions - the legal process by which a lender advertises its intention to sell a foreclosed property to the highest bidder - are on the downswing in some suburbs, but slightly up in others. Dover recorded five auction notices in 2008, and nine last year.
In Weston, lenders filed eight auction notices in 2008, and recorded 14 in 2009. Nearby Lincoln had two notices in 2008, and that number doubled to four in 2009, the Warren Group reported.
Those dry statistics have become a personal crisis for the Bairds, who took out a primary adjustable-rate mortgage for $999,950 in October 2005, and a second mortgage for $300,000 in March 2006, according to the Norfolk County Registry of Deeds.
The Bairds acknowledge they have not been able to pay their mortgage or property taxes since October 2008. According to Norfolk County public records, nearly $3,000 in 2009 property taxes owed to the town of Dover remains unpaid. The amount owed on the mortgages is not a matter of public record, but Stewart Baird said he believed the family owed close to $1 million on the home.
“It seems so pointless and grotesque to pull people out of their homes when nobody is buying,’’ his wife said. “We are very active members of the community. We’re very involved. Everyone knows us and they know Laurie.’’
The Bairds had been talking to bankers as recently as last week about their hardships, but were hoping for more leeway to keep their decade-old career management and coaching business, Aspire Associates, afloat in a tough economy, said Stewart Baird.
Stewart Baird, who worked for decades selling advertising for the publisher
“We thought we could do it,’’ he said.
Turcotte said there are no statistics about how many people facing foreclosure are senior citizens on limited incomes. Most studies of predatory lending have so far focused on minorities and immigrants, but senior citizens who have limited income projections and medical concerns were certainly vulnerable to over-borrowing at terms they could not afford, he said.
“Seniors were certainly susceptible as those other groups of people hurt by predatory lending, and the government programs out there are not much help to people who owe far more than their home is worth,’’ Turcotte said.
Instead of calling a lawyer the evening of Feb. 11 when they learned the house might finally be sold from under them the following day, the couple called their pastor, Max Olmstead, some neighbors, and friends from the Dover Church, which they’ve attended for decades.
“I came the same way I would have come if someone was dying. I came because I thought it would be a difficult day for them,’’ said Olmstead, a United Church of Christ minister who arrived six months ago to lead the 400-member Dover congregation.
He, along with several other family friends, came out to the Baird home on the day of the scheduled auction to offer sympathy and moral support.
It was the second pastoral foreclosure crisis of Olmstead’s career, he said.
The first, at his previous church in Connecticut, also had involved an older couple bested by the recession, and he said the community also struggled with how to respond to that situation. “Churches can help people pay a utility bill, or get back on their feet or even pay a mortgage bill. But we can’t pay a whole mortgage,’’ he said.
Dexter Donham, who helps Laurie Baird get to church in her wheelchair most Sundays, fellow church member Nancy Goodall, and a neighbor, Paul Wood, showed up as well.
Family friend and musician Peter Gefler of Boston also came out to Dover last week to offer moral support to Stewart Baird, with whom he plays in the local suburban swing band, The JAZZmakers. “This shouldn’t be happening,’’ he said.
With just 15 minutes to go before the 1 p.m. Friday auction, the Bairds and their friends were preparing to walk up the long, winding driveway at 28 Greystone Road when the Chelmsford law firm handling the auction offered a stay of execution. The bank had determined that the auction would be delayed for 30 days, until March 12.
“Glory, glory hallelujah!’’ moaned Martha Baird. “God bless you all.’’
Laurie Baird was too emotional to speak - she wept with relief in her mother’s embrace.
The auctioneer, Daniel P. McLaughlin, stood in front of the Baird home at 1 p.m. anyway to make the formal announcement that the auction would be delayed.
He said the region’s foreclosure crisis was obvious: His Boston-based auction company oversees between four and 20 such proceedings daily.
He shook Martha and Stewart Baird’s hands. “I hope I never see you again,’’ he said. “I hope everything works out.’’
Jumana Bauwens, a New York-based spokeswoman for
The Bairds hugged their friends and headed back inside the house - still theirs, for now. They must consider bankruptcy, and “all options’’ to alleviate their financial burdens, Stewart Baird said.
Olmstead said the close call prompted him to rework his sermon for the following Sunday - originally slated to be an upbeat Fat Tuesday ode - to reflect upon the economic crisis that hit so close to home, with the Bairds.
“We have to pray for everyone going through something like this,’’ he said.
Late last week, Stewart Baird said his family has begun to accept the idea it may be too late to save their house. The debt may simply be too overwhelming. They don’t know where they would go if they do lose their home, however, and still hope they won’t have to move.
“We can now admit to being optimistic [when we asked] for the additional money we hoped and planned would put us over the line with our business,’’ he said, considering the situation in retrospect. “We are very positive thinkers. We believe that can affect what actually happens.’’
Erica Noonan can be reached at enooonan@globe.com. 
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