All Posts Tagged With: "stated"
Can 11,000 Appraisers Be Wrong?
Gee, golly, mention the idea of pressuring appraisers to come up with the “right” valuation numbers and you’re hardly alone. There seem to be a large number of appraisers who have encountered efforts to distort their valuations. Say 11,000 of them.
That’s how many signed on at AppraisersPetition.com. And what, exactly, is their beef? As the [...]
Mortgages, Foreclosures & The Disgrace of Journalism
It was long ago when I received a degree in journalism.
I wanted to study journalism because it gave me an opportunity to travel and to meet interesting people. I have been a correspondent on Capitol Hill and at the White House, I have lived on an offshore drilling rig in pursuit of a story, I [...]
Mortgages & The Unnecessary Crisis
July 14, 2008 should be remembered as a notable date in the long history of mortgage lending. The federal government gingerly stuck its regulatory foot into the warm waters of consumer advocacy and for the first time enacted rules which would protect borrowers. Not all borrowers, of course, and nothing that would materially disturb the [...]
31Dec2008 | Peter G. Miller | 0 comments | Continued
How Paper Mortgage Losses Turned Real
The question that keeps coming up is this: If only a small portion of all mortgages are failing how come the general financial impact has been so enormous?
To resolve this mystery, let’s go back to the 1970s when the mortgage-backed security — the MBS — was developed. The MBS was a financial device designed to [...]
15Dec2008 | Peter G. Miller | 0 comments | Continued
Should We Bring Back Ozzie & Harriet Loans?
It was in 2005 that Bill Dallas — then president and CEO of Ownit Mortgage Solutions, at the time on one of the 15 largest subprime mortgage lenders in the country — said “underwriting guidelines developed in the 1950s don’t address the needs of today’s homebuyers and brokers. Loans that met the needs of Ozzie [...]
26Sep2008 | Peter G. Miller | 0 comments | Continued
Foreclosure Numbers at New Highs: Are Toxic Loans To Blame?
Foreclosures used to be a rarity and for the most part that’s still the case. As of the second quarter of 2008 only about 2.75 percent of all loans were in the process of being foreclosed, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
That term “in the process of being foreclosed” is important. Neither borrowers nor [...]
Should Lenders Dump No-Tell Loans?
For many years the lending process has become less and less rigid. In the general case this is a trend to be welcomed, but the question to be asked is this: Have we gone too far?
With “stated income” loans borrowers tell the lender how much they make but the lender graciously does not verify [...]
Will Regulators End Liar Loans?
With foreclosures rising and home prices falling, could something other than supply and demand be moving the real estate market?
That’s a question increasingly being raised in Washington, where a new interest in mortgage fraud is beginning to emerge.
“Mortgage fraud takes many forms,” says Jim Saccacio, Chairman and CEO at RealtyTrac.com, the nation’s largest foreclosure resource. [...]
1Sep2008 | Peter G. Miller | 0 comments | Continued
Toxic Loans: The Coming Storm
(Presented before the Association of Real Estate License Law Officials (ARELLO), April 7, 2006, at Jacksonville, FL.)
It’s been a very good century for real estate, at least so far. According to the National Association of Realtors, the typical home that sold for $139,000 in 2000 was worth $208,700 in 2005.
Not only have home values [...]
25Aug2008 | Peter G. Miller | 0 comments | Continued
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