During Tuesday night’s CNN-Western Republican Leadership Conference Debate in Las Vegas, presidential candidate Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) tried to appeal to the mothers of America, telling them, essentially, that she has their back when it comes to the ongoing national problem of high foreclosure rates.
Leadership in the U.S. House Financial Services Committee will hold a subcommittee hearing this week in advance of four bills aimed at terminating federal programs designed to keep Americans in their homes.
Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.) tells The Washington Post that there will be no new bank bailout if financial companies suffer serious losses due to the recent foreclosure fraud scandal.
It’s kind of easy to take pleasure in all this and think the banks are being hoisted on their own
Today, Standard & Poor’s released an update of the Case-Shiller home price index, finding house prices increased 4.4 percent in the second quarter after declining 2.8 percent in the first. Nationally, home prices are up 3.6 percent year-on-year, about the level they were in the fall of 2003. Most More…
Today, RealtyTrac announced that lenders repossessed 93,000 homes in July — 9 percent more than in June, and up 6 percent since 2009. Again, California had the most filings, and Nevada had the highest foreclosure rate, for the 43rd straight month.
Today, the Department of Housing and Urban Development released its annual report on homelessness in America. The report found that the number of homeless people declined slightly from 2008 to 2009, but that the Great Recession and housing crash have left more families with children homeless. All in all, More…
Good news from RealtyTrac this morning, as it reports that foreclosure filings — default notices, auctions and reposessions — fell 9 percent from March to April, evidence that the foreclosure crisis might have peaked last month.
In the good column: The number of homes receiving default notices fell 12 More…
The case is now famous. The homeowner had applied for the Home Affordable Mortgage Program, or HAMP, an Obama administration initiative to give distressed and tapped-out borrowers lower monthly payments. Applicants are meant to be just scraping by — they have to file hardship affidavits and the government presumes More…
Today, New York Times economics writer David Leonhardt has a good column on why it might be a good time to buy a home in some unlikely parts of the United States.
Leonhardt shows that the rent ratio — the price of the home divided by the estimated annual More…
President Obama today unveiled his administration’s fourth attempt to stave off the worst effects of the mortgage and housing crisis, the latest in a series of efforts that started with the Home Affordable Modification Program and now includes special assistance for the hardest-hit states and incentives for banks More…
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