March 2, 2011 (Chris Moore) The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reports that pending home sales declined in January for the second month in a row. NAR’s Pending Home Sales Index declined 2.8 percent to 89.9 from a downwardly adjusted 91.5 in December on a scale where 100 reflects home sales in 2001. The figure [...]
February 28, 2011 (Shirley Allen) Investors and cash buyers drove existing home sales higher in January. Investors bought a whopping 23 percent of all existing homes, while a third of all sales were purchased for cash. January’s annual rate of 5.36 million home sales also represented a 5.3 percent annual gain over January 2010 figures, [...]
February 28, 2011 (Chris Moore) Although in the early stages, the battle lines are already being drawn in the sand over the Presidents reported proposal to force mortgage lenders and servicers to either pay fines of over $20 billion or to modify an equal amount of mortgage loans by writing down the principal balances. On [...]
February 25, 2011 (Chris Moore) In the latest new home sales report released by the Commerce Department, new single-family homes plummeted 12.6 percent in the month of January to a seasonally adjusted rate of 284,000, a dismal showing following one of the sector’s worst years in half a century. Read more...
February 25, 2011 (Brian Moore) The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) disclosed Thursday in its seasonally adjusted purchase-only house price index that U.S. home prices fell 3.9% in the fourth quarter when compared to a year earlier citing lingering unemployment and an oversupply of homes on the sales market for the price decline. Read more...
February 25, 2011 (Jeff Alan) The House Financial Services Committee said the panel will vote on a series of four bills March 3rd that would terminate government-backed loan modification/foreclosure prevention programs that have been called "failed and ineffective." Read more...
February 25, 2011 (Shirley Allen) Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae both released their financial results for the 4th quarter of 2010 with Freddie Mac reporting a loss of $113 million for the quarter and Fannie Mae reporting a loss of $2.1 billion. Freddie Mac reports that they would have actually earned $1.2 billion had it [...]
February 24, 2011 (Chris Moore) Freddie Mac today released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), which shows a drop in long-term fixed rates this week with the 30 year fixed rate mortgage dropping to below 5 percent. Read more...
February 24, 2011 (Chris Moore) In what some might misconstrue as blackmail, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the Obama Administration is trying to push through a settlement over mortgage-servicing breakdowns that would force America’s largest banks to pay for principal writedowns in mortgage loans or face penalties of over $20 billion. Read more...
