Foreclosures Will Hurt N.J.'s Future Far Less Than in Other States

But Goldman said Gov. Jon S. Corzine is committing millions of dollars to a slate of programs aimed at halting foreclosure proceedings and keeping families in their homes, and said the incoming Obama administration will do even more to stem the foreclosure tide.

New Jersey is not one of the nation’s foreclosure hot spots — a distinction awarded to Florida, California, Arizona and Nevada — so even though “it’s worse than we’d like,” Goldman said, the recession may not be as devastating here as elsewhere.

“Look, we have a lot of things going for us here in New Jersey,” Goldman said. “We have a diverse economy, we’re a well-to-do state. But we’re going to be affected. So whether we’re as badly affected as other places or not — and I think we will not be — we will be affected.”

Goldman had praise for the state’s community banks — many of whom say they are planning to increase commercial lending, even during the recession. “While these other institutions were giving away these loans without checking credit, so anyone could walk in and get a loan, these people were maintaining decent underwriting standards,” he said. “They still wanted to get to know their customers and make sure they could pay them back. Well, now that the world has returned to a saner standard, and some of the larger financial institutions are in financial difficulty, they are still well-capitalized, still maintaining good underwriting standards, and they can participate in the lending market in a much more meaningful way than before.”

Asked if there might be bank failures ahead in New Jersey, Goldman said, “Anything is possible, so I will never say never — but we’re hopeful not. We have some very few banks that have some problems, and we’re working with them.” Any failures here, Goldman said, “would certainly not be on any kind of a large scale.”

The mortgage lending conference was presented by the Mortgage Bankers Association of New Jersey, the New Jersey Bankers Association and the New Jersey League of Community Bankers.

Speakers included Robert R. Davis, executive vice president of the American Bankers Association; Patrick Lawler, chief economist of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight; Goldman; Michael Horn, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank of N.Y.; E. Robert Levy, executive director of the Mortgage Bankers Association of New Jersey; Mary Kay Roberts, partner in the law firm Riker Danzig; Jeffrey Otteau, a real estate expert at Otteau Valuations; Jim DeGeronimo Sr. president of Majestic Security; Oberta Janel, managing director of J.H. Cohn Professional Mortgage Consultants; and Werner Jasinski, vice president of Security Atlantic Mortgage.