mortgage

The PBS star attracted crowds to what appeared on the surface as a way to help black borrowers build wealth, but a lawsuit alleges it was actually just the opposite.

The Home Valuation Code of Conduct makes getting an appraisal costlier and more time-consuming for would-be buyers — and the added time can prevent purchasers from getting the best possible mortgage on their new home.

Are we really going to go through this again? Immediately after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development finished putting the final touches on a controversial plan to allow first-time homebuyers to use an $8,000 tax credit as a downpayment on a new home, some in the  Senate are proposing nearly doubling the credit [...]

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 [...]

My friend J.P. Freire, the managing editor of The American Spectator, is the brains behind NewAmericanTeaParty.com. When I saw him today after Grover Norquist’s meeting, he was driven, intense — gripping his MacBook like a life raft in the Arctic Ocean, updating the group’s Facebook page and list of sponsors.
Freire’s site is only one node [...]

With the financial crisis deepening, the FHA must be revitalized immediately — and there’s no Plan B.

If President-elect Barack Obama wants to win support for a package to help out struggling homeowners, he will have to help the public understand that we’re all affected by the mortgage crisis.

On Thursday, TWI covered a foreclosure eviction in suburban Virginia. These evictions are continuing during the holiday season, despite a suspension called by mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. After the eviction, on Monday, the former homeowner, Julio Angulo, just sat outside his house. He told us he had nowhere to go.
I checked in [...]

Foreclosures were supposed to pause between Thanksgiving and the new year, but for hundreds of thousands of homeowners, like Julio Angulo of suburban Virginia, they still face losing their homes this month.

Financial bloggers are in mourning today for Tanta, at Calculated Risk, who died on Sunday in Columbus, Ohio. As the tributes to her throughout the blogosphere make clear, her analysis of the mortgage crisis was closely followed and influential. She had spent 20 years in mortgage banking — she knew what she was talking about, [...]