In another sign that the foreclosure crisis might have peaked, foreclosure filings declined 3 percent in May, RealtyTrac reported this morning. Florida, Nevada, California and Arizona remain the hardest-hit states. From the report:
“The numbers in May continued and confirmed the trends we noticed in April: overall foreclosure activity
Barry Ritholtz points to this chart of the Mortgage Bankers’ Association purchase index. It shows mortgage applications crashing after the expiry of the Obama administration’s homebuyers’ tax credit, falling to the same level as in May 1997, when there were approximately 40 million fewer people living in the United More…
In April 2005, 64,057 homes received some form of foreclosure notice. This April — with the foreclosure crisis ebbing — 333,837 did. The recession has upended the logic of the entire housing market, with a quarter of homeowners underwater, the administration trying to keep real estate prices stable More…
This afternoon, an amendment protecting mortgage consumers from predatory lending practices made it into Sen. Chris Dodd’s (D-Conn.) financial regulatory reform bill. The Senate approved the amendment by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) 63 to 36.
The new language prohibits mortgage lenders from receiving hidden payments More…
For the past year, Republicans have insisted that Congress take up legislation to stop the losses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the government-sponsored enterprises that buy up and repackage mortgages, keeping loan prices stable. Fannie and Freddie have incurred more than $150 billion in losses since the burst 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…
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…
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…
Elizabeth Warren warned in February that commercial real estate was the next recovery-killer, and since nothing improved by March, Tim Geithner yesterday took to CNBC to acknowledge the problem with commercial real estate and push the administration’s program to incentivize small banks to lend to small More…
Subprime and even prime adjustable rate mortgages were one of the many triggers of the collapse of the housing market because, when the introductory rates ended, lenders often significantly and suddenly raised rates and thus monthly payments for many borrowers. Economists have been predicting that a new raft of rate More…
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