A Look at GSE 2007 Earnings; Ouch!
Friday, February 29th, 2008Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae may have
gotten
good news from their regulator which lifted the corporations’
portfolio caps, but their earnings reports for the year just ended were
pretty devastating.
WSJ: The negative-feedback loop
Friday, February 29th, 2008Ahead of the Tape - WSJ.com. Very interesting Wall St Journal article that explains the negative feedback loop -
Don’t forgive mortgage debt, just postpone paying it
Friday, February 29th, 2008The Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), is urging the federal savings and loan lenders under it’s authority to refinance loans
Huge Changes May be Coming for Lenders and
Thursday, February 28th, 2008Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday that Fannie Mae
is proposing to ban the use of appraisals by a lender’s
employees or those arranged by mortgage brokers.
The proposed change would mean that Fannie Mae would no longer
authorize its lending partners to use appraisers employed by a
wholly owned subsidiary and, while we have not seen the memo, apparently
it contains reference to the eventual establishment of an appraisal
clearinghouse which we assume would assign appraisers to a project…
Mortgage Rates and the Fed - Get it Straight !
Thursday, February 28th, 2008I can’t decide what was more troublesome yesterday: the
comically uninformed questions put to Big Ben regarding
mortgage rates, or the comically inaccurate article
printed by CNBC on the same subject. Whatever the case, the media is
awash with analysts, experts, officials, and laypersons offering rather
strong opinions on a subject about which they have such a painfully
shallow understanding.
I’m more concerned with something that no one has really talked about
yet: the lack of understanding of our mortgage
problems…
GSE Portfolio Caps to be Lifted March 1
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight
(OFHEO) announced Wednesday that it would be
lifting the caps it had imposed several years ago to
limit growth of Freddie Mac’s and Fannie Mae’s owned portfolios.
Each of the GSE’s has also been under a consent order which required
them to, among other things, maintain a 30 percent capital
cushion. These will stay in place for…
New Home Sales and Prices Continue Seemingly Endless Decline
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008The Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban
Development jointly released their monthly report on new home sales early
Wednesday morning.
The report showed new home sales declined once again,
this time to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 588,000 units. At the
end of January there were an estimated 482,000 houses
available for sale nationally. At the current rate of sales this
represents…
Mortgage Rates Back Up to January Levels
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Mortgage rates continued to grow in the most recent
week, now approaching very close to the level of
rates at the beginning of the year.
Mortgage application volume decreased…
Case Shiller, OFHEO Reports Add to the General Housing Gloom
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Two reports on house prices were released on Tuesday
and neither was happy news for homeowners or for the real estate
industry.
The S&P/Case Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index
showed that the decline in house prices accelerated in the fourth quarter
of 2007 with a…
Are Programs Beginning to Slow Rate of Foreclosure Growth?
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Despite the many programs gearing up or in place to help homeowners
resolve problems with their mortgages, foreclosure related
activities continued to increase in January. But, perhaps
partially because of these programs, the rate of increase appears to be
slowing from the pace of previous months.