The Comptroller of the Currency’s new report on the mortgage market in the fourth quarter of 2009 also sheds light on some of the problems reported by borrowers accepting all temporary and permanent HAMP modifications (including ones in HAMP) — problems which, left unchecked, will likely More…
The Comptroller of the Currency keeps an eye on the mortgage market, and the results continue to be terrible. They monitor 64 percent of the mortgages in the United States, or 34 million loans, from most of the mortgage servers in a portfolio representing the larger market: About two-thirds of More…
Long before the financial crisis, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were synonymous with moral hazard in the minds and classrooms of most economists. Everyone (including Fannie and Freddie) believed that if they got into trouble by making risky investments, the government would bail them out. Of course, the feeling that More…
Less then a month after the announcement that the federal government was going to start an incentive program to encourage buyers and banks to sell houses at depressed values without foreclosures, David Streitfeld of The New York Times has the details — and they’re a little More…
Of all the interesting tidbits in Brett Arends’ article in The Wall Street Journal about how to decide whether to walk away from your mortgage, his admission that the middle class is the only part of America adhering to standards of personal financial responsibility might be the most More…
With Obama’s much-vaunted mortgage modification program all but deemed a failure — one million applications have resulted in 31,000 modifications in the $75 billion program — the administration is set to embark on a new phase in its project to resolve the ongoing mortgage crisis. That phase involves More…
This should sound familiar: Growing losses on Federal Housing Administration-backed mortgage loans are prompting fears the agency will be next in line for taxpayer help, The Wall Street Journal says.
The Federal Housing Administration, hit by increasing mortgage-related losses, is in danger of seeing its reserves fall below the
CNN examines the stalled efforts to rework troubled mortgages, noting that only 6 percent of 4 million eligible homeowners have been helped so far under the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable program. The piece notes that banks say they are trying to do loan modifications, but need more time More…
Despite the recent good news that U.S. home prices rose 2.9 percent in the second quarter of 2009, it’s too early to call a turnaround for the battered housing sector. Although this modest increase in the S&P/Case-Shiller national home index is the first uptick since 2006, the number of homes More…
Even as the Obama administration presses the lending industry to get more mortgage loans modified, the practice of forcing borrowers to sign away their legal rights in order to get their loans reworked is a tactic that some servicers just won’t give up on.
Waivers requiring borrowers to More…
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