Home prices: up or down?
Hey, does anyone want to buy a house?
Anyone? Anyone?
No? Perhaps not.
Home sales haven't exactly fallen off a cliff at an annualized pace of 5.36 million so far this year, according to the National Association of Realtors. But nor are houses flying off the shelves, or rather, out of the multiple-listing services.
The reasons for not buying
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Tagged buy a house, homeownership, Mortgages, rent or buy
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Foreclosures even hit Habitat
How tough has the foreclosure crisis been?
So tough that even Habitat for Humanity, which builds homes for people in need, finds itself in the mindboggling situation of having to take them back -- in many cases, for the first time in a chapter's history.
"We're in the business of putting people into houses, not taking them out,"
Loan servicing in 16 colors
How home loan servicers should be compensated is a subject of intense debate in the mortgage industry today, as servicers have come under fire for their inaccessibility to homeowners and sloppy foreclosure-processing practices.
To fix the problems, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, or FHFA, has told Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to work on proposals for
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Foreclosed owners speak out
If the national foreclosure crisis had an epicenter, it would have to be Las Vegas, since Nevada is more often than not at the top of any state-level list that involves foreclosure statistics.
Now, "The Face of Foreclosure: An Analysis of the Nevada Foreclosure Crisis," a new report from the Nevada Association of Realtors, has presented
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Tagged face of foreclosure, foreclosure crisis, Mortgages, nevada foreclosure
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Loan brokers’ pay targeted
New federal regulations, effective April 1, will impose some major changes in how lenders compensate mortgage brokers for their services in the loan origination process.
Here's a summary:
Lenders won't be allowed to pay any direct or indirect compensation to a mortgage broker based on the terms or condition of the loan, other than the loan amount.
Lenders
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Fannie, Freddie to raise rates
Borrowers, get ready for higher interest rates on new conforming mortgages.
It's no secret that rates have already risen as the outlook for the U.S. economy has brightened in recent weeks. But rates on some new home loans are also set to go up regardless of economic activity.
That's because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two
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Are hybrids worth the risk?
The sharp rise in mortgage interest rates has presented a challenge for borrowers who want to buy a home or refinance an existing mortgage, but don't like the slightly higher payment they now face.
One popular solution is a hybrid mortgage, which has a lower fixed rate for three, five, seven or 10 years, after which the
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Punch line to foreclosure-gate
When the banking bigs and the feds decided to turn the page and sweep "robogate" under the rug last December, it left me wanting. Not for anything as corny as justice or compassion, though both would go a long way in this foreclosure quagmire in which we'll likely spend the 20-teens.
What I was missing was
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Tagged foreclosures, Mortgages, robosigning
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First glance at Fannie-Freddie reform
The Obama administration wants to make mortgages more expensive and harder to get. In exchange, taxpayers would be less likely to bail out mortgage companies or delinquent homeowners. That's the essence of the Treasury Department's memo to Congress titled "Reforming America's Housing Finance Market."
I'll deconstruct the key paragraph from the introduction, sentence by sentence.
Under our
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Tagged 30 year fixed mortgage, financial reform, Mortgages
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Congressmen aim to kill HAMP
The debate over the success or failure of the federal government's Home Affordable Mortgage Program, or HAMP, entered a new phase two weeks ago, when Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, introduced a bill that would all but eliminate the entire program.
The bill, H.R. 430, HAMP Repeal and Deficit Reduction Act of 2011, would end any HAMP
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Tagged foreclosure help, HAMP, loan modification, Mortgages
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