(Reuters) – U.S. mortgage applications rose in the latest week for the first time in three weeks as demand for home purchase loans reached the highest level since October, data from an industry group showed on Wednesday.
Read The Full Story Here
While some analysts speculate that the worst is over for the US housing market, new data suggests that a few cities are not that lucky. Just as equity investors worry about a “double-dip” in US stocks, several housing markets are already beginning to resemble this troublesome pattern of peaks and troughs.
Read The Full Story Here
CHICAGO (MarketWatch) — Homeowners love their yards. They plant gardens, create cozy areas for entertaining, and install decorative elements that they’re as happy to look at from the kitchen window as they are from their chaise lounge.
And despite a weak economy, Americans are expected to continue this love affair with the world outside their door [...]
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Under fire to do more to stop the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration will announce Friday new steps to help the unemployed and those who are “underwater” with a bigger mortgage than their home is worth. For some unemployed borrowers, the effort would require servicers to reduce or suspend monthly mortgage [...]
A new Bank of America plan to limit foreclosures and stymie strategic defaults will cut principal balances on some troubled home loans, allowing up to a 30 percent decrease in what borrowers owe. The program, announced today, was virtually unthinkable just months ago.
Read The Full Story Here
It’s going to be another bad spring for the US housing market—unless you’re a buyer. With prices still falling and more distressed homes hitting the market, many experts are expecting the market to get even worse before it gets better. ”There’s been some increase in inventory lately, mostly from distressed sales,” says Walter Malony, spokesman [...]
WASHINGTON — Sales of new homes fell unexpectedly to their lowest point on record in February, in part because stormy winter weather kept buyers away. The results pointed to the housing industry’s struggle to rebound from the worst slump in decades. Sales fell 2.2 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 308,000, [...]
REUTERS Delinquencies on mortgages rose to nearly 14 percent in late 2009, led by a sharp increase in seriously overdue home loans held by the most credit-worthy borrowers, U.S. banking regulators said on Thursday. The percentage of current and performing mortgages fell to 86.4 percent at the end of the fourth quarter of 2009, down [...]
NEW YORK – Homeowners have sued Bank of America Corp for allegedly reneging on a promise it made to modify troubled mortgages as a condition of accepting $25 billion of federal bailout money. In a lawsuit filed Monday in Seattle federal court and seeking class-action status, two Washington residents allege the largest U.S. bank puts [...]
Reuters: Sales of previously owned U.S. homes fell slightly in February, according to a trade group report on Tuesday that underscored the fragile nature of the housing market’s recovery. The National Association of Realtors said sales fell 0.6 percent month-over-month to an annual rate of 5.02 million units, the third straight month of declines in sales. [...]
The Obama administration on Friday announced a $14 billion effort to try to stem a rising tide of home foreclosures by giving lenders incentives to erase some mortgage debt and slash mortgage payments for the unemployed. The new aid programs, funded from the $50 billion allocated to housing rescue under the Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset [...]
Problems in commercial real estate are a “serious concern,” Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank President Dennis Lockhart said on Monday. Lockhart told the Naples Council on World Affairs that most of commercial real estate’s woes still lie ahead, but added he wouldn’t call them a crisis.
Read The Full Story Here
(Reuters) – The current mortgage finance system should be revamped and any government guarantees should be clearly defined and the risk should be priced accordingly, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plans to tell Congress on Tuesday.
Read The Full Story Here
NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Marianne Gentry learned her home was in foreclosure from a recorded message from her bank. So she and her husband and son packed their belongings, expecting to get kicked out any day. The Gentrys are not alone in feeling that their bank, OneWest, could have done more to modify their mortgage [...]
MONEY Magazine: Latest forecasts and projections for the nation’s largest metro areas.
Read The Full Story Here
NYTimes: In his most detailed examination of the causes of the financial crisis, Alan Greenspan, the former Federal Reserve chairman, acknowledges that the Fed failed to grasp the magnitude of the housing bubble but argued that its policy of low interest rates from 2002 to 2005 did not cause the bubble.
Read The Full Story Here
Chase is hoping to slow foreclosures with a new center it opened today in Palm Beach Gardens aimed at helping borrowers modify loans and keep their homes. The center is the second in Palm Beach County, with a Boynton Beach location opening last year. By the end of April, Chase will have 51 Homeownership Centers [...]
(Reuters) – Republicans in the House of Representatives on Friday recommended the country’s top two mortgage finance companies, the recipients of a massive government bailout during the height of the financial crisis, be phased out in four years in order to restore stability to the housing market.
Read The Full Story Here
