Just in time for Halloween the housing market has gained a few new and somewhat frightening characters. May I introduce the “Vampire” and “Zombie” foreclosures. Be careful, try not to get too close, they just might bite. Not even bullets made from Canadian silver maple leaf coins would help you here. You would probably be better off keeping the silver coins.

For the uninitiated a “Vampire” foreclosure is one where a property has been taken back by the bank but the owners continue to live there. This may occur for a number of reasons from the bank allowing the occupants to remain there and thus escape maintenance cost to the resident outright fighting the foreclosure.

This term was first seen in a report by RealtyTrac, a real estate data company and online foreclosure marketplace. Vampire foreclosures are “sucking the life out of the housing market,” bemoans Daren Blomquist, vice president at RealtyTrac.

Zombie foreclosures on the other hand are properties that the owner has forsaken and left for dead. They sit there with vacant expressions, mouth open, occasionally drooling and leering at the normal ones around them.

“This distressed inventory is artificially being held back so that in the short-term, it’s helping boost the home prices and the housing recovery in general,” Blomquist laments. Unfortunately, both these ghoulish foreclosures, besides frightening other people, will at some point come back on the market and while it will probably not bring the housing recovery to its knees, it will likely bleed off some of the forward momentum.

The good news is that there is an antidote for these conditions and they are not doomed to remain in their current living-dead state. While we wait for the antidote for Vampire and Zombie foreclosures we at ITM Trading think it best to consider gold and other precious metals as a safe haven in these scary times. We encourage you to give us a call on our troll-free, excuse me, toll-free number 1 888 OWN GOLD (1 888 696 4653) and allow us to share the benefits of buying gold coins.