April 6, 2011 (Chris Moore) The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending April 1, 2011. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 2.0 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from last week. Read more...
April 6, 2011 (Chris Moore) Acting Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Massad, revealed in a speech given at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, that starting in April the Treasury Department will include a scorecard for each of the largest HAMP servicers in its quarterly compliance report. Read more...
April 6, 2011 (Jeff Alan) Homebuilder Beazer Homes has started a new division to buy homes that were built after 2004 that are primarily foreclosures and short sales, and plans to rent them out in housing markets where many people are having trouble qualifying for home loans. Read more...
April 5, 2011 (Jeff Alan) Credit quality of first lien mortgages improved in the fourth quarter of 2010, as the percentage of seriously delinquent mortgages declined for the fourth consecutive quarter, according to the quarterly report released by the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS). It was the lowest level seen since the second quarter of [...]
April 5, 2011 (Shirley Allen) DataQuick reports that the share of borrowers using government insured FHA loans fell to a 27 month low in February to 33.3 percent of all mortgages based on an analysis of 20 large housing markets nationwide. Meanwhile, the number of VA mortgages increased from a year ago to 6.4 percent, [...]
April 4, 2011 (Jeff Alan) Five more states have been approved to receive funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Emergency Home Loan Program (EHLP). The bridge loan program is designed to help unemployed families pay their mortgages by providing up to $50,000 in assistance to help borrowers pay their mortgage principal, [...]
April 4, 2011 (Chris Moore) The Obama Administration released the March edition of the Housing Scorecard, cautioning that the latest housing figures underscore fragility in the housing market and the need to continue efforts to help families stay in their homes. Citing figures from CoreLogic, home prices remain weak under continued strain from foreclosures and [...]
April 1, 2011 (Chris Moore) Republicans in the House of Representatives and the Senate have introduced bills whose ultimate goal is to shrink the federal government’s role in the mortgage market. While the Obama Administration's three option proposal has been little heard from since it was first unveiled over a month ago, the GOP has [...]
April 1, 2011 (Jeff Alan) A housing panel consisting of economists and real estate experts, predicts that housing prices will likely continue to slide for two more years with a tentative projection of a weak recovery beginning in 2013. Nearly half of the 111 economists polled by MacroMarkets, co-founded by industry expert Robert Shiller, believe [...]
