Greece at crossroads for freeze on home foreclosures

By Marc Castro

Aug 17, 2013 02:18 PM EDT

Greece would be lifting its restrictions on the implementation of home foreclosures in order to give banks the leeway to recover its bad loans. The plan was initmated by Greek finance minister last Saturday. This adds more fuel to the issue of preserving the cohesion of the fragile government coalition.

The current regulations state that cash strapped financial institutions are barred from the auction of repossessed homes from delinquent borrowers. This was a temporary rule institututed back in 2010 to protect households during that period of austerity.

This freeze on auctions, which previously had been extended thrice before, would expire by December 31. According to Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras, this policy should not be extended no further in the future.

He was quoted by Realnews as saying, "If the auctions aren't liberalized, then banks will collapse." On the other side of the fence, specifically eleven other solons frm New Democracy and junior coalition partner PASOK party though are working on the extension of the freeze order, according to a report from Eleftherotypia newspaper.

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