News
Real Estate: Banks Excluded From Robo Call Ban
Robo calls are now largely banned, unless the caller has written permission to phone you.
“American consumers have made it crystal clear that few things annoy them more than the billions of commercial telemarketing robocalls they receive every year,” says Jon Leibowitz, Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission. “Starting September 1, this bombardment of prerecorded [...]
Real Estate: Will Mortgage Interest Write-Offs Be Reduced?
The Congressional Budget Office has come out with a report showing 66 ways to raise money for the federal government. This sounds like dull and boring stuff until you get to Option #7: Reduce the Mortgage Interest Deduction or Replace It with a Tax Credit.
Ugh. You can see where this is going.
“The first alternative [...]
Mortgages: No Jail Time For Lenders
Why have so few lenders gone to jail? In part because neither predatory lending or insider trading with commodities are federal crimes.
4Sep2009 | Peter G. Miller | 0 comments | Continued
Mortgages: Do It Yourself Loan Modifications
I searched Google today looking for an answer. Is it possible, I wondered, to get a do-it-yourself loan modification, one that would instantly and automatically meet the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).
I found 27,300 responses to my Google inquiry, but the one response I wanted was missing. Why is it that one can’t simply [...]
Real Estate: What Really Happened To Home Prices
We’re not going to restore the housing market without solid factual evidence to suggest that home prices have started to turn around. A good source for such evidence is the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the government body that now oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
In figures release yesterday, FHFA tells us that in the [...]
Mortgages: Interest Rates Retreat
During the past week mortgage interest rates moved visibly lower. Freddie Mac says the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) averaged 5.12 percent with an average 0.7 point for the week ending August 20, 2009, down from last week when it averaged 5.29 percent. Last year at this time, the 30-year FRM averaged 6.47 percent. [...]
22Aug2009 | Peter G. Miller | 0 comments | Continued
Mortgage News: Investors Have Rights Too
What rights do mortgage investors have when loan servicers want to change loan terms? That is the essential issue in this case which pits Greenwich Financial Services Distressed Mortgage Fund 3, LLC against Countrywide Financial Corporation, now a part of Bank of America.
Does the safe harbor provision created by Congress last March for mortgage servicers [...]
Mortgage News: Deliquencies Up For 10th Straight Quarter
Mortgage loan delinquencies continue to increase, a suggestion of rising foreclosure rates ahead and continued home price declines. The “good” news — if you can call it that — is that the pace of delinquencies seems to be slowing.
TransUnion.com reports that mortgage loan delinquencies increased for the tenth straight quarter, hitting an all-time national average [...]
Mortgage News: One Less Lender, One More Headache
It’s hard to imagine that a bank with 346 branches would go belly up, but that’s what happened Friday when the Colonial Bank of Montgomery, Alabama, was closed by the State Banking Department.
With the speed of light, or at least the speed of an online transfer, Colonial was then taken over by the Federal Deposit [...]
Real Estate: Second Quarter Sales Rise, Prices Fall
Existing-home sales in the second quarter showed healthy gains from the first quarter in the vast majority of states, according to the latest survey by the National Association of Realtors. However, prices continued to fall in most markets.
Total state existing-home sales, including single-family and condo, rose 3.8 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of [...]
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