foreclosure

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 to date. Quite the batting average. But the [...]

There’s a lot of buzz already about New York Times economic reporter Edmund L. Andrews’ account of his personal financial crisis  in “Busted: Life Inside the Great Mortgage Meltdown.” Mainly it’s because more than a few financial blogs regularly linked to Andrews’ coverage of the financial crisis. The same veteran reporter who covered the Federal [...]

A central component of the Obama administration’s economic strategy was abandoned by the White House in the days leading up Senate vote, giving political cover to opposing Democrats.

Over at Hungry Hungry Hippos. they’ve taken me to task for my post Wednesday on efforts in Flint, Mich. to deal with abandoned and vacant properties by literally shrinking the size of their city — cordoning off the blight and leaving it behind. I had written that Flint and other cities facing overwhelming property abandonment [...]

House Democrats introduced legislation yesterday designed to stem the foreclosure crisis, including a provision empowering bankruptcy judges to alter the terms of primary mortgages — an option homeowners don’t have under current law.
The move comes less than a week after President Barack Obama unveiled his own sweeping plan to tackle the housing market collapse, which [...]

Looking for bi-partisan support for his stimulus package, President Barack Obama wants to hold off on letting bankruptcy judges help struggling homeowners.

According to a review of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refinancing documents by TWI, buried deep in the fine print lies language that strips legal rights for homeowners.

The fight that neighborhoods in Cleveland are launching against banks that dump vacant and vandalized foreclosed homes back onto the real estate market received a bit of a setback, as I noted in my story Monday. A private, non-profit housing advocacy group had filed suit in local housing court to force the banks to clean [...]

A reader over at TPM flags a very revealing quote from an anonymous Bush administration official in a New York Times article about the state of the government’s response to the foreclosure crisis.

This morning’s Wall Street Journal has an interesting story on how the government’s $4 billion neighborhood stabilization program isn’t nearly enough to address the problems faced by communities with thousands of homes in foreclosure.
But wait, haven’t I read this story before?