The simplistically brilliant master of the obvious, Yogi Berra, would have a field day offering observations about the economy and especially the housing market. His quote, “It ain’t over till it’s over” is a perfect analogy of the housing market crisis. The escalating number of homeowners who are perilously delinquent on their mortgages but are clinging to their homes is about to see a tsunami of foreclosures that will likely strike as the real estate market continues stumbling, yet showing modest signs of moving toward stabilization.

At the present time there’s an estimated 7 million properties poised for foreclosure but, to date, have not been repossessed and placed on the bargain basement sale rolls. Industry economists are projecting another three years for this stockpile of homes to actually hit, move through the market and be acquired by new owners. But 7 million is an optimistic estimate; the actual number of imminent foreclosures could swell during the current year as the job market continues to falter and additional distressed homeowners become delinquent on their loans. Without immediate mortgage relief and minimal governmental red tape that often takes more than a year for homeowners to navigate, the bottom will once again fall out of the housing market.

Obviously, the more foreclosed properties that hit the market, the greater impact they have on undercutting current home prices and making it even more difficult for sellers to simply get out of their homes without taking a financial beating. Since 2008 when the housing market fell like a stone off a cliff, there’s been a grindingly slow improvement in actual home prices and sales according to a recent banking industry report. However, expectations have risen regarding probable repossessions for the remainder of this year, and that’s horrible news for homeowners and lenders holding mortgages.

Further clouding an already distorted picture, mortgage companies and banks have been playing a shell game with already repossessed homes by holding them on their books rather than releasing them onto an already oversaturated market. They can’t hold these losing propositions much longer, and as borrowers get farther behind on their payments, the oncoming inventory of foreclosed properties will once again sink the market. Analysts call this a “shadow market,” one that indicates the impending lag between actual defaults and outright foreclosures. Lenders are using whatever means they have at their disposal to deal with the mounting number of borrowers who can’t make their payments. The last thing these lenders need on their books are more repossessed homes with a diminished supply of qualified or even interested buyers.

Times have changed and today’s delinquent borrowers aren’t those living in homes financed by subprime loans. That wave of borrowers is old news. Those on the brink of going under now are folks who were creditworthy and made typical, safe loans. But due to economic circumstances they’ve lost their jobs, exhausted their savings, and become delinquent on their payments. An estimated three quarters of those who are now 90 days or more delinquent have traditional prime loans. The majority of these borrowers haven’t made a mortgage payment in six months or longer.

While you’d assume the government would be focused on assisting these people refinance and stay in their homes, they’ve become the most problematical to assist because so many of them have exhausted their unemployment benefits and don’t have any form of income. They simply can’t make any mortgage payment regardless of the amount.

But even if they did have the financial wherewithal to make a reduced mortgage payment, the cumbersome process for modifying or refinancing a loan can take six to eight months. Lenders are holding huge backlogs of delinquent loans, but this situation isn’t sustainable.

Another aspect of the likely second wave of the housing market disaster is an additional 11 million borrowers who are under water or upside down meaning they owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth. This sector is fraught with concern about whether or not to hold onto a home that may not be worth what’s owed on it for another decade. Many are simply cutting their losses and walking away. If they have a stable income stream and a reasonable cash down payment of 20-30 percent, many of them are able to find builders that are willing to offer them great deals on selling prices and help them negotiate loans on new homes for a lower payment per month than they were paying.

In some circumstances, lenders are opting for short sales. This is when the home is sold for less than the outstanding loan balance, but it gets the property off the books. In a trial program in several locations across the country, Citigroup is testing a program allowing delinquent borrowers to remain in their homes for up to six months at no cost, but they must sign a binding agreement for leaving the property in good, saleable condition upon departure.

The quirky thing about the impact of the oncoming new wave of foreclosure is that it will have a wide variance depending upon the part of the country it’s in. Some large metro areas have as a “shadow inventory” estimated to last for upwards of one year. But the worst hit locales have at least two or more years worth of inventory that will have to be cleared.

No matter where you live there will be some impact of the oncoming round of housing market destabilization. It’s not a matter of if it will occur, it’s when, how bad will it be, and how long will it last. “It ain’t over till it’s over.”