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AP: Fed to Unveil Home Mortgage Plan
2007-12-18 14:36:00
Fed to unveil home mortgage plan By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer A Federal Reserve plan being unveiled Tuesday would give people taking out home mortgages new protections against shady lending practices. The rules to be proposed are especially geared to providing some future safeguards to the riskiest “subprime” borrowers, already painfully stung by the housing and credit debacles. The proposal is expected to apply to new, or future, loans made by all types of lenders, including banks and brokers. The plan could be finalized next year. The Fed, which has regulatory powers over the nation’s banking system, is considering: _barring or restricting lenders from penalizing subprime borrowers — those with tarnished credit or low incomes — who pay their loans off early. _forcing lenders to make sure that borrowers, especially subprime ones, set aside money to pay for taxes and insurance. _barring or limiting loans that do not require proof of a borrower&rsquo...
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CNNMoney.com: Next Steps for FHA Bills
2007-12-18 14:22:00
Next steps for FHA bills Provisions of the Senate bill are less aggressive than the House version. Differences will be reconciled in conference. By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer, December 17 2007 A Senate bill that would expand the functions of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) could help upwards of 200,000 homeowners - though a similar House bill that passed last month is more aggressive. Christopher Dodd (D - Conn.), the sponsor of the Senate bill, which passed last week, hopes to make low-cost, fixed-rate mortgages available to more homebuyers and to homeowners seeking to refinance out of expensive adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). “This measure can shield homeowners from harm by helping families find safe, fair and affordable mortgages,” said Dodd in a statement. It can help provide credit, both for new homeowners and those seeking a way out of abusive loans in which they are currently trapped.” FHA-insured loans have become an important eleme...
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MortgageNewsDaily: FHA Loan Limits Raised By Senate
2007-12-18 14:07:00
FHA Loan Limits Raised By Senate So-called FHA reform reached an important milestone on Friday when the U.S. Senate overwhelmingly approved its version of the legislation. The bill, which passed by a vote of 93-1, seeks to make the Federal Housing Administration more relevant in the current housing and mortgage lending environment by expanding the agency, loosening some underwriting standards, and raising its current restrictive loan limit. The FHA was established in 1934 to help borrowers, particularly those with low incomes, purchase homes by guaranteeing banks that those loans would be repaid should the borrower default. But the agency’s loan limits have generally lagged behind those of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and as home prices climbed dramatically and lenders with looser underwriting standards proliferated the agency became less and less of a player in the mortgage market. Over a ten year period ending last December the FHA’s share of new mortgages fell from 9.1...
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Sun-Sentinel.com: Realtors Group Lifts Outlook
2007-12-12 14:34:00
Realtors group lifts outlook Housing analysts dispute forecast By Alan Zibel, South Florida Sun-Sentinel.com, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS December 11, 2007 WASHINGTON Bucking conventional wisdom, a trade group for real estate agents Monday said the battered housing market is on the verge of stabilizing and inched up its outlook for 2007 and 2008 home sales. The revised monthly forecast from the National Association of Realtors, which followed nine consecutive months of downward revisions, calls for U.S. existing home sales to fall 12.5 percent this year to 5.67 million — the lowest level since 2002. Last month, the association predicted 5.66 million existing homes would be sold this year, down from 6.48 million last year. The Realtors’ group also forecast sales will rise slightly in 2008 to 5.7 million, up from last month’s prediction of 5.69 million. Numerous other economists, however, are far less optimistic than the trade group. They predict weak sales and falling prices ...
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Sun-Sentinel.com: Bush Mortgage Plan Won’t Help S. Fla. Housing Marke
2007-12-07 14:07:00
Bush mortgage plan won’t help S. Fla. housing market By Paul Owers; South Florida Sun-Sentinel; December 7, 2007 South Florida won’t get a big boost from President Bush’s plan to freeze interest rates for homeowners nationwide who are bracing for sharp increases in their adjustable-rate mortgages, analysts say. Many distressed borrowers across the region can’t benefit because they’re investors or homeowners at least 90 days late on their house payments. To qualify for help under the program announced Thursday, residents must be living in their homes and current on their mortgage payments. What’s more, Bush’s proposal is focused on preventing a national foreclosure crisis and not meant to aid individual states, such as Florida and California, that are leading the housing bust after the boom of 2000-2005. Some economists say there’s nothing in the president’s proposal that will trigger a rebound in a South Florida housing market t...
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Homes101.net: Somebody’s Buying Homes!
2007-12-05 15:07:00
Somebody’s Buying Homes ! By Blanche Evans, December 5, 2007 To hear the national media tell it, homebuyers are fools to buy right now. Home prices have dropped 5 percent since October 2006. Our economic problems aren’t over, so home prices are bound to drop further. Why would anyone catch that falling knife? But there are some markets out there that are making monkeys out of housing bears. According to the National Association of Realtors, home prices are higher in 93 out of 150 metro areas. Which markets are sizzling? Charlotte, North Carolina, San Francisco; Albuquerque; and Green Bay, Wis., among others. But don’t take NAR’s word for it. Forbes Magazine has noticed the red glow from those cities and others. The magazine just named 10 cities where home prices are going through the roof, including Forbes: 2007 Best U.S. Housing Markets: * Salt Lake City, 246,700, up 14.1% * Charlotte, S.C., $220,000, up 11% * San Jose, Ca., $852,500, up 9.4% * San Francisco...
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CNNMoney.com: Roadblock to a Subprime Solution
2007-12-05 14:30:00
Roadblock To A Subprime Solution The biggest obstacle to a mortgage bailout plan could be the investors who wound up with the bad debt. By Les Christie, CNNMoney.com staff writer December 4 2007: 3:26 PM EST A sweeping solution to the subprime lending crisis could get snagged by a big sticking point at the end of the mortgage chain. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said in a speech that its Hope Now coalition of government, industry and community groups is developing a streamlined way to move able homeowners into sustainable mortgages. A large part of that plan, it’s been widely reported, is to broadly rework adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs) for all borrowers who qualify and freeze their interest rates before they jump to unaffordable levels. But investors in mortgage-backed securities, who buy the loans wholesale from lenders, aren’t exactly jumping on board. “You have contracts in place guaranteeing investors a fixed rate of returns,” said Jim C...

Reuters: Citi Economist Sees Another 100 bps In Fed Rate Cuts
2007-12-03 14:20:00
Citi Economist Sees Another 100 bps In Fed Rate Cuts by Kevin Lim & Alan Raybould, Reuters c/o Yahoo.com; 12/03/2007. The Federal Reserve will cut interest rates by 100 basis points before June to help the housing market, Citigroup’s chief economist, Lewis Alexander, said on Monday. Alexander, who worked at the Fed before joining Citi, also said Asian economies would probably suffer only a modest slowdown as a result of the U.S. housing turmoil as the spillover effect from housing was much smaller than from sectors such as information technology. “When the tech bubble burst, there was a substantial amount of capital and employment that had to be worked off,” he said at a talk for Citi clients in Singapore. Citi, he said, expected the Fed to cut its Fed funds rate by 25 basis points when it meets later this month and by 50 basis points in the first quarter of 2008. The final 25 basis-point cut would probably take place in the second quarter. Alexander said t...
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Bankrate.com: House Mortgage Bill Doesn’t Offer Bailout
2007-11-29 06:52:00
House mortgage bill doesn’t offer bailout By Holden Lewis, Bankrate.com The House of Representatives has passed a mortgage reform bill that is as remarkable for what it doesn’t do as for what it does. It doesn’t include a bailout of borrowers or lenders. The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007 seeks to prevent borrowers and lenders from making dumb choices. It doesn’t help troubled borrowers and lenders who made poor decisions in the past. The bill “cannot undo what happened, but it makes it much less likely that it will happen in the future,” Rep. Barney Frank, the measure’s architect, said a few hours before the House passed it last week, 291-127. “The fundamental principle of the bill is not to put remedies in place to deal with these problems when they occur, but to stop them from occurring in the first place.” Bursting housing bubbles have exposed bad lending practices. From 2003 until early 2007, mortgag...
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RISMedia: Five Reasons to Learn about Emerging and Specialty Markets
2007-11-29 05:48:00
Five Reasons to Learn about Emerging and Specialty Markets By John Voket, RISMEDIA, Nov. 29, 2007 Anyone willing to embrace the growing diversities among consumers should expect numerous opportunities in the real estate space, according to Oscar Gonzales, president and founder of diversity marketing firm The Gonzales Group. Gonzales shared his thoughts at a session titled “Five Reasons Why You Must Learn about Emerging/Specialty Markets,� during RISMedia’s 18th Annual Leadership Conference. Along with Gonzales, the panel included: Frances Martinez Myers, senior vice president with Prudential Fox & Roach; Alan Thompson, vice president and regional director of emerging markets for Stewart Title; and Margaret Ling, multicultural liaison with Fidelity National Title Group. Among the many reasons to tap new and emerging specialty markets, five major points surfaced during the 90-minute panel: 1. Stats/Growth Gonzales peppered the panel and audience during introductory remarks,...

Bankrate.com: ‘Back to Basics’ in MortgageLand
2007-11-16 16:10:00
‘Back to basics’ in Mort gageland By Holden Lewis , Bankrate.com, Posted: Nov. 15, 2007 Mortgage bankers are eagerly going back to basics before Congress makes them. At the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association, or MBA, the most oft-spoken phrase was “back to basics.” No matter what you were doing — walking past a shoeshine stand, staring mutely at your shoes in an elevator or waiting in line for lunch — you heard someone uttering “back to basics.” What’s the hottest mortgage product today, Doug Duncan? “The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage,” Duncan, chief economist for the MBA, said with a tight smile. “It’s pretty much anything that’s fixed rate and conforming.” In other words, the home loan du jour conforms to standards set by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: It isn’t a jumbo (a mortgage for more than $417,000), isn’t subprime (for a borrower with iffy cred...
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ModBee.com: House passes bill on mortgage lenders
2007-11-16 14:27:00
House passes bill on mortgage lenders By JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer The Modesto Bee, Thu, Nov. 15, 2007 WASHINGTON With home foreclosures skyrocketing, the House on Thursday voted to crack down on mortgage lenders by forcing them to get licenses, making them responsible for discovering whether borrowers can really repay and fining them for steering people toward risky subprime loans. The measures are designed to keep more people from sinking into the current mortgage crisis, where prospective home owners with shaky credit got mortgages with low interest rates only to see the rates rise and bring monthly mortgages up to prices they cannot afford. More than 2 million adjustable rate mortgages are scheduled to reset by the end of 2008. Many American homeowners are expected to go spiraling into debt, with the number of homes involved in foreclosure proceedings nationwide almost doubling in the third quarter of this year when compared with 2006, according to RealtyTrac Inc...
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Wall Street Journal Online: Mortgage Bailouts: Who Should Be Helped, and Ho
2007-11-16 13:50:00
Mortgage Bailouts: Who Should Be Helped, and How? By David Wessel From The Wall Street Journal Online While we’re sorting out the big question about the subprime debacle, how to preserve the good (hard-working, bill-paying people once barred from the American dream becoming homeowners) without repeating the bad (fraud, reckless lending and fast-talking salesmen peddling mortgages to folks who simply can’t afford them), there’s an issue that can’t wait: a tidal wave of foreclosures. Interest rates on about two million once-popular, subprime mortgages known as 2/28 or 3/27 (because the rate for the first two or three years is lower) are poised to jump in the next year. Many will rise to a range of 9.5% to 11% from 7% or 8%. That would boost a typical subprime borrower’s payment by roughly $350 a month. For many of those borrowers, that’s the difference between affordable and not. There’s good reason to presume that someone who stops paying th...
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MortgageNewsDaily.com: Zillow to Nationalize Local Real Estate Adverstising
2007-11-14 05:32:00
Zillow to Nationalize Local Real Estate Adverstising MortgageNewsDaily.com; Tue, 13 Nov 2007 15:08:40 EST No matter what you may think about Zillow, the Seattle-based real estate firm and its somewhat crazy approach to the market, credit must be given for its constant innovation. On Tuesday it announced that it was joining 11 major newspaper publishing companies with a combined total of 282 newspapers throughout the country in a strategic partnership to extend the papers’ local classified advertising to Zillow’s online platform. The newspaper companies joining Zillow at this point include the Hearst Newspapers; Journal Register Company; Lee Enterprises, Incorporated; Media General, Inc.; MediaNews Group, Inc.; Morris Communications Company, LLC; Paddock Publications; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review; The E.W. Scripps Company; Times-Shamrock Communications and The Day Publishing Company. These companies own or represent such major market dailies as The San Francisco Chronicle, ...
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Sun-Sentinel.com: Home-Builder Executive Assesses South Florida Market
2007-11-12 05:39:00
Home-builder executive assesses South Florida market By Paul Owers, South Florida, Sun-Sentinel November 11, 2007 Three years ago, home builders held lotteries to deal with hordes of people, mostly short-term investors, overwhelming their sales centers. Today, with housing markets crashing, builders practically beg for buyers. “During the boom, you were developing strategies to manage demand,” said Jill DiDonna, a ...
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Bankrate.com: A Little Good News About Real Estate
2007-11-09 15:14:00
A little good news about real estate By Craig Guillot • Bankrate.com It may still have to get worse before it gets better, but the residential real estate market shows signs that demand is building and home values may start recovering in 2008. It seems there’s bad news for the housing market every day: More mortgage resets are coming in the next year, lenders are tightening standards and homes continue to pour onto the market. All point to sinking home values in the near future. There are plenty of statistics to warrant a gloomy outlook. The National Association of Real tors says existing single-family home sales dropped 8.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.38 million in September, compared to a pace of 4.79 million in August. That rate is 19.8 percent below the 5.46 million-unit pace from September 2006. What’s more, the median existing single-family home price was $210,200 in September, down 4.9 percent from the same time last year. Good news, bad ne...
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Forbes.com: Ten Ways To Solve The Housing Crisis
2007-11-08 14:58:00
Ten Ways To Solve The Housing Crisis Matt Woolsey, Forbes .com, 11.07.07, 12:00 PM ETc As ongoing subprime fears send bank shares plummeting, ousted Merrill Lynch and Citigroup chiefs take responsibility for the firms’ $8.4 billion and $14.9 to $17.9 billion write-downs, respectively, and Congress mulls overhauling the mortgage-lending industry, the question on many lips remains: Is there ...
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SeekingAlpha.com: Why The Fed Continues To Cut Rates
2007-11-06 14:01:00
Why the Fed Continues To Cut Rates by Tim Iacono, posted on: November 06, 2007 The charts below originally appeared in a post that appeared in August. Over the weekend, a reader asked for an update and the results are below. The first chart shows the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Index (by far, the best indicator of ...
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NaplesNews.com: Some Real Estate Agents Struggling But Others Still Cashing
2007-11-06 13:46:00
Some real estate agents struggling but others still cashing in by Laura Layden, NaplesNews.com. Originally published ? 5:46 p.m., November 3, 2007 Updated ? 1:21 p.m., November 4, 2007 Even in tough times, homes sell. The real estate industry continues to chug along in Southwest Florida, despite a market slowdown. It?s nothing like the heydays of 2004 and 2005, when homes ...
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CBS News: The Basics Of Online Real Estate Sales
2007-11-05 05:01:00
The Basics Of Online Real Estate Sales AOL’s Regina Lewis Shows Potential Sellers (And Buyers) How To Get Started New York, Nov. 3, 2007 (CBS) At the dawn of the Internet age, if you were shopping for a house, it was a novelty to be able to look at grainy pictures of properties and long text lists of ...
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Marketwatch.com: U.S. Mortgage Rates Drop Near Six-Month Lows
2007-11-02 12:46:00
U.S. mortgage rates drop near six-month lows Concerns of weaker economic growth are keeping rates down: economist By Amy Hoak, MarketWatch Last Update: 10:50 AM ET Nov 1, 2007 CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Mortgage rates dropped to near six-month lows this week, driven down once again amid continued market concerns of weaker economic growth and further declines in the housing ...
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Marketwatch.com: FTC warns some mortgage ads may violate law
2007-10-31 14:06:00
FTC warns some mortgage ads may violate law Claims about low rates and payments may deceive consumers, agency says By Amy Hoak, MarketWatch; Last Update: 12:15 PM ET Sep 11, 2007 CHICAGO (MarketWatch) – Some of the mortgage advertisements currently appearing in Web sites, newspapers, magazines, direct mail and unsolicited email and faxes ...
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Marketwatch.com: Skirting a recession
2007-10-30 13:13:00
Skirting a recession If home prices fail to stabilize, U.S. will need a Plan B, Boskin says by Steve Kerch, MarketWatch Last Update: 9:06 PM ET Oct 25, 2007 LAS VEGAS (MarketWatch) — Despite severe problems in the housing market, a credit crunch and record-high oil prices, the U.S. economy will skirt a recession in the coming few ...
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The Pursuit of The Real Estate Truth
2007-10-28 23:55:00
The Pursuit of The Real Estate Truth Commentary by Scott Einbinder RISMEDIA, Oct. 29, 2007-The demise of the discount firm Foxtons will hopefully be a lesson to the entire real estate industry. The lesson is that millions of dollars of capital, first-class marketing campaigns and an award-winning Web site is no guarantee (more…) © The 800lb Gorilla for The Jungle Blog, 2007. | Permalink | No comment | Add to del.icio.us digg Who's linking ? Technorati BlogPulse Google Want more on these topics ? Browse the archive of posts filed under Blogroll, Editorial, Marketing, Real Estate , Service.Related PostOctober 16, 2007 -- Bankrate.com: Feds Cut Down-Payment Assistance ProgramsOctober 25, 2007 -- Marketwatch.com: The Future of Subprime LendingOctober 22, 2007 -- The Morning Call.com: Investors buying homes on the cheapAugust 8, 2007 -- South Florida Realtor Evolves into Entrepeneur Mag’s Hot 500 List!October 23, 2007 -- Associated Press:Leading Dem...
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Marketwatch.com: The Future of Subprime Lending
2007-10-25 07:22:00
The Future of Subprime Lending It will be back, but mortgages to riskier borrowers will look much different By Amy Hoak, MarketWatch. Last Update: 2:18 PM ET Oct 19, 2007 BOSTON (MarketWatch) — Although “subprime” has become a four-letter word in the country’s collective lexicon and no one is sure when the credit crisis that was spawned by a meltdown in the risky lending sector will ease, mortgage bankers say you can count on this: Subprime shall return. The next generation of subprime mortgages, however, will look much different than the loans issued during the height of the housing boom in the first half of the decade that are now causing so much trouble, mortgage professionals say. “So long as we have a policy position in this country of maintaining or further increasing homeownership rates there is going to be subprime lending,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist with First American CoreLogic, a provider of mortgage-risk management and fraud...
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Associated Press:Leading Dem Tackles Abusive Lending
2007-10-23 15:49:00
Leading Dem tackles abusive lending Rep. Barney Frank introduces bill that would remove incentives to offer exotic loans and require licensing of brokers. October 22 2007: 2:41 PM EDT WASHINGTON (AP) — A leading House Democrat took on the banking industry Monday with a bill to restrict lending practices partly blamed for the nationwide surge in mortgage defaults and foreclosures. The legislation introduced by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, aims to prod states into enacting stronger mortgage regulations and sets up federal-level regulations if they don’t do so. A banking trade group criticized the bill, saying it would raise costs and reduce options for borrowers. The bill is designed to protect future borrowers, not the estimated 2 million to 2.5 million borrowers with weak credit histories whose monthly costs are expected to jump over the next 18 months when their adjustable-rate mortgages reset. Among other things, the...
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The Morning Call.com: Investors buying homes on the cheap
2007-10-22 15:52:00
Investors buying homes on the cheap by Ken Harney of www.themorningcall.com October 21, 2007 Call them grave dancers, vulture funds, turnaround specialists or the more euphemistic ”opportunity investors.” However you identify them, the deal is the same: When hyperactive real estate markets lose their sizzle, or property owners no longer can afford to hang on to their houses, well-capitalized investors smell blood — and move in. That’s happening in most of the ”bubble” areas that saw heavy speculative activity and razzle-dazzle financing from 2001 through 2005. But it’s also happening across the country in less volatile markets where unaffordable mortgages and economic distress are producing record numbers of panic sales to investors at fractions of former values. In Miami Beach and south Florida, for example, real estate consultant Jack McCabe says he is advising ”hedge funds, high net worth individuals, Wall Street investment banks, ...
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Bankrate.com: Feds Cut Down-Payment Assistance Programs
2007-10-16 14:28:00
Feds cut down-payment assistance programs By Holden Lewis ? Bankrate.com For a decade, credit-challenged homebuyers have used a regulatory loophole that lets them get Federal Housing Administration mortgages without putting their own money down, while at the same time avoiding costly subprime loans. About 7,000 buyers per month were exploiting the loophole, and now the feds ...
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Miami Herald: South Florida Real Estate Outlook
2007-10-15 15:16:00
    Posted on Mon, Oct. 15, 2007 South Florida real estate outlook By MATTHEW HAGGMAN Jack McCabe and Michael Cannon covered a lot of ground in their nearly two-hour conversation about the South Florida real estate market last week at The Miami Herald. Here is a sampling:SPECULATORS HOW BIG A ROLE DO THEY PLAY? McCabe says he would poll buyers at ...
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The Federal Reserve Cuts Interest Rates by 1/2 Point
2007-09-19 15:22:00
As expected, The Federal Reserve is giving the rate cuts everyone has been waiting for. Let’s see if the healing process begins for a rapid recovery or continue to crawl and disrupt the economy even more. Enjoy this very important event in The Jungle! The Fed Slashes Interest Rates by 50 Basis Points by Mortgage ...
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