CONWAY - Like most of the country our area struggles with two major economic issues: unemployment and home foreclosures.
While the national average for foreclosures is one in every 600 homes, Horry County is worse off, with one in every 451 homes in foreclosure.
The numbers are better in the Pee Dee.
In Florence County one in about 1200 homes is foreclosed on.
Five major banks could agree to a settlement with states in the next few weeks to give money to people who can't pay their mortgage.
Conway resident Eva Butler had a steady job until about three weeks ago.
"Times are just tough and I was temporarily laid off," Butler said.
Her former employers told her she’d get her job back this April.
Tuesday she filed for unemployment and is already two months behind on her mortgage.
“It was on my ninth birthday that we moved in there. It was on my birthday,” Butler said. “So, yes I would be very upset if we lost it. So I’m hoping something will come up."
Butler hopes the five banks - Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citibank and Ally Financial, and the state attorneys general adopt the agreement within weeks.
They would pay around $25 billion dollars and that money would be used to reduce the principal for around a million struggling borrowers.
750,000 people who were victims of foreclosure fraud would receive checks for just fewer than two thousand dollars.
Real estate attorney Dicke Lester said the settlement would hurt the banks but wouldn’t cripple them.
Lester also said in Horry County its not just locals foreclosing on their primary homes.
"We have a great majority of second home owners and obviously somebody's going to try and pay their own mortgage where they live on their primary residence and they'll sacrifice the investment property, or second home, or vacation home," said Lester.
Mortgage Analyst Rick Sharga said as big as the settlement is its going to affect a small amount of mortgage holders.
Sharga said the major lenders hold trillions of dollars in mortgages.
"25 billion a big number, but in the overall scheme of things relative to the real estate market, it's a question to as how far you'll be able to spread that out.” Sharga said.
Eva Butler may soon lose the home she grew up in and hopes the settlement is made.
"I think it would be a blessing. A blessing to the ones who are in need," she said.
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