Last week, I noted that House Republicans had introduced a motion to penalize strategic defaulters — underwater homeowners who simply stop paying their mortgages and surrender their homes to the bank — by barring them from obtaining Federal Housing Administration-backed loans in the future. I hadn’t noticed until More…
Today, the Treasury and Housing and Urban Development Departments released April data on the Home Affordable Modification Program, the Obama administration’s effort to modify mortgages in order to stem the tide of foreclosures and keep families in their homes. Modifications increased 13 percent month-to-month, to 300,000.
“As the number More…
Over at the excellent Atlantic Business Channel, Daniel Indiviglio runs through the three major overlooked issues in Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) financial regulatory reform bill that economists and market-watchers flagged for The New York Times. The folks quoted cite credit runs in the shadow-banking sector (in English: old-fashioned More…
This should sound familiar: Growing losses on Federal Housing Administration-backed mortgage loans are prompting fears the agency will be next in line for taxpayer help, The Wall Street Journal says.
The Federal Housing Administration, hit by increasing mortgage-related losses, is in danger of seeing its reserves fall below the
Among the many housing policy disappointments sustained during the bust, the Hope for Homeowners mortgage refinancing program has to rank as the disappointing-est. Originally estimated as having the potential to aid nearly half a million struggling borrowers, the program has resulted in just one successful loan refinancing More…
With credit remaining tight and banks continuing to restrict lending, it’s been up to the government to keep the mortgage markets moving. And a major player these days is the Federal Housing Administration, a Depression-era insurer of mortgage loans specifically tapped to take on a much larger role More…
The Mortgage Bankers Association recently joined the chorus of those worried about the Federal Housing Administration’s growing role in the housing market, the Orange County Register’s Mortgage Insider reports. Due to the mortgage meltdown and the demise of subprime lenders, the FHA’s share of the housing market already has More…
When Congress passed the mortgage rescue bill in July, politicians touted help for homeowners as a big part of the legislation. By Oct. 1, the Federal Housing Admin. was to set up a program that would back, with $300 billion in guarantees, the refinanced loans of homeowners in trouble. More…
When the government bailed out Bear Stearns in March, plenty of people on Main Street complained it wasn’t fair to save an investment bank and do nothing to help homeowners.
Imagine how they feel now.
Each new step the government takes in the private markets — More…
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