Two reports from the Mortgage Bankers Association today — one mixed, one troubling.
First, mortgage loan applications — measured by the MBA’s purchase index, which includes all mortgage applications for single-family homes — dropped 27 percent week-on-week, to 24 percent lower than a year ago. The news is not More…
Shahien Nasiripour at the Huffington Post parses a J.P. Morgan filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission and notes that the bank, the second largest in the United States, is concerned about the rising tide of strategic defaulters — underwater homeowners who choose to walk away from their homes. More…
Via Scott Reckard at the L.A. Times, two companies released national reports yesterday showing a decline in serious mortgage delinquencies, when homeowners are more than two months behind on payments.
TransUnion said that serious delinquencies fell for the first time in three years in the first quarter, to More…
On mortgage giant Freddie Mac’s blog, “Featured Perspectives,” executive Don Bisenius takes on strategic defaulters — underwater mortgage-holders (that is, homeowners who owe more on their mortgage than their home is worth, meaning that if they sell their house they will still owe the bank money) who chose to More…
I think it’s a bit above my pay grade to speculate on the broader sociological meaning of this. But for what it is worth, the arrested subject of this past weekend’s Times Square bomb plot is a homeowner in the midst of foreclosure.
In The New York Times, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan offers some housing-market optimism:
Recent reports on housing starts, new home sales and housing prices show that the housing recovery continues….
Although the housing inventory exceeded the demand in 2007 and 2008, we have known for a while
Bloomberg News’ Caroline Baum has a tart piece on strategic defaults and consumer spending — invoking the theory, first put forward by HousingWire’s Paul Jackson, that underwater homeowners are purposefully defaulting on their mortgages and using the funds to buy regular goods. That would explain why consumer spending More…
The Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development report that housing starts climbed more than expected in March. Builders applied for 685,000 permits (60,000 more than expected, up from 637,000 in February) and filed 626,000 housing starts (16,000 more than expected, up from 616,000 in February). More…
Blogging at Naked Capitalism, Edward Harrison provides a persuasive argument for why retail sales and consumption are increasing, despite persistent joblessness and a lack of income growth. He posits that homeowners in foreclosure or struggling with mortgage payments are deciding to stop sending checks to the bank, letting their More…
With the Home Affordable Modification Program faltering in its effort to stem the foreclosure crisis, Dean Baker, the co-chair of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, argues for a simple and free way for Congress to aid banks and underwater homeowners.
Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Housing More…
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