O Canada, you sensible land!
What's the best way out of our bubble-bust-bubble mortgage muddle that has resulted in a record 2.87 million American foreclosures last year alone? The answer may lie due north.
O Canada, you have no doubt watched our housing-driven Great Recession with the stern if sympathetic eye of a schoolmaster who well knows the fate of all undisciplined
Why not test drive a home?
You would never buy a car without a test drive. Apply the same concept to home buying and you may get a free stay.
A Florida homebuilder is inviting potential buyers stay in one of their furnished newly built homes and for two nights and three days for $99.
It sounds like those timeshare deals in which
Compound gives up bin Laden
Follow the real estate.
That's a liberal misappropriation of the usual cliched instruction that investigators should "follow the money." But it's nonetheless an apt idea in light of the fact that at the end of a 10-year manhunt, it was Osama bin Laden's $1 million house that gave him away.
Authorities found out that bin Laden was living
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Tagged bin Laden compound, million dollar house, Mortgages, real estate
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Ownership falls to 13-year low
The national homeownership rate is at its lowest level since the second quarter of 1998. Remember when the comet-crashing-into-Earth movie "Deep Impact" was a hit? You don't? Too long ago, huh? Well, that was the second quarter of 1998.
According to the Census Bureau, the homeownership rate fell to 66.4 percent in the first quarter of
Servicers must work with borrowers
The FHFA says it is updating some guidelines to ensure servicers work with delinquent borrowers before they attempt to foreclose on their homes.
Considering the foreclosure crisis started four years ago and more than three million families already have lost their homes, I guess the best compliment I can give the agency is: better late than
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Tagged Foreclosure, Mortgages
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Home loan applications rise
Lenders reported a bump in new mortgage applications in mid-April, but the uptick may turn out to have been more of a blip than an upswing in the trend line.
The volume of new mortgage applications increased 5.3 percent in the week ended April 15 compared with the prior week, according to a survey conducted by
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Tagged ARMs, home sales, mortgage applications, Mortgages
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What?! Prince in foreclosure?!
I know the foreclosure crisis has been super-bad, but now it's even badder, given that it's knocking on the door of the baddest, most ridiculously funky musician to ever emerge from the frozen north: the Minnesota Landowner Currently Known as Prince. Or MLCKP, if you prefer.
The Carver County Sheriff's Office reports that the multitalented, multiplatinum
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Tagged celebrities, Foreclosure, Mortgages
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‘Ability to pay’ in 475 pages
Four hundred seventy-five pages.
That's the length of the Federal Reserve's latest notice of a proposed rule to implement a federal law that says lenders must determine whether a borrower has the ability to repay a mortgage.
The issue of whether a borrower can repay a loan is naturally somewhat tricky.
But 475 pages?
That's longer than most novels, and
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Tagged ability to pay, Federal Reserve, mortgage payment, Mortgages
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Predicting strategic defaults
Owning a home that is worth less than what you owe on your mortgage isn't fun.
But if the thought of walking away from this mortgage has ever crossed your mind, you might want to know that someone may be watching you.
FICO announced it has developed new technology to predict which borrowers are more likely to