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Recent head-line news on mortgage, housing market, remodeling,
investment, ...
(For latest news, see home page)
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* Economy
loses speed in spring; more weakness ahead San Francisco Chronicle
09/30/2010 The nation's economic growth tailed off sharply in the spring
and probably isn't faring any better now. The Commerce Department reported Thursday
that gross domestic product the broadest measure of the economy's health
expanded at a feeble 1.7 percent annual rate in the April-to-June
quarter.
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* Apartments
will give way to houses Columbus Dispatch
09/29/2010 Two blighted, vacant apartment buildings will be torn down to
make way for new homes as part of a project to rejuvenate Weinland Park.
The commissioners yesterday voted unanimously to accept Leonard's
recommendation to erase $156,097 in unpaid property taxes by placing the
properties, for a few seconds at least, into the county's land bank.
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* JPMorgan
halts 50,000 foreclosures for possible flaws Houston Chronicle
09/29/2010 JPMorgan Chase has temporarily stopped foreclosing on more than
50,000 homes so it can review documents that might contain errors.
JPMorgan's move Wednesday makes it the second major company to take such
action this month, underscoring a growing legal problem. The issue could
stall an already overloaded foreclosure process. Still, analysts don't
expect the delays to reduce the number of foreclosures over the long run.
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* Foreign
buyers helped support local real estate Sarasota Herald-Tribune
09/29/2010 Foreign buyers were a balm to the wounds the Great Recession
inflicted on Florida real estate, according to a new survey by Florida
Realtors. Sixty-five percent of Realtors who participated in the survey
conducted during July and August said they had worked with an international
buyer during the preceding 12 months. Twenty-two percent said they worked
with two and 18 percent said they worked with three. About 25 percent said
they had an international client who bought a home.
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* The
Color of Money: Obama questioner wanted reassurance Richmond Times-Dispatch
09/28/2010 By the time I called her, Velma Hart was surprised at how her
words had been dissected and analyzed. Hart is the middle-aged, middle-class Maryland woman who asked
President Barack Obama to reassure her that he remained the crusader for
change she had voted for. "The financial recession has taken an
enormous toll on my family," she told the president recently during a
town-hall meeting in Washington.
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* Second
loan turns into a foreclosure nightmare Sarasota Herald-Tribune
09/27/2010 Mildred McClendon's troubles with a small second mortgage show
just how quickly people caught up in predatory home loans can find
themselves on the verge of losing their home. The 75-year-old Sarasota
widow, her attorneys say, was granted a second mortgage that was written up
illegally, and the lender then tried to foreclose, even though McClendon
continued to make her monthly payments. Along the way, they say she was
also charged bogus late fees and penalties, and in just the past 10 months
the mortgage company doubled the amount McClendon is said to owe -- from
$8,000 to $16,000.
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* Distressed
properties not necessarily good for everyone Columbus Dispatch
09/26/2010 Among the byproducts of the housing bust has been a dramatic
rise in the number of distressed homes on the market. Many buyers assume
these properties are can't-miss deals, but purchasing a distressed property
is often fraught with risk. "Foreclosures are actually getting
artificially inflated to a point because people are willing to walk
away," said Mike Golden, broker in charge with Century 21 Vicki Berry
Realty.
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* Feds
indict Modesto men in real estate scheme Modesto Bee
09/25/2010 The founder and longtime owner of Century 21 Apollo real estate
was arrested Friday and charged with defrauding banks and elderly
homeowners of more than $10 million. Jim Lankford, 71, and his roommate,
Jon McDade, 46, bilked seniors and lenders for 11 years, according to a
federal grand jury indictment dated Thursday.
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* Fed
boss says plodding economy still needs help San Diego Union-Tribune
09/24/2010 The economy is recovering from a deep recession more slowly than
anticipated and still needs help from the Federal Reserve , Chairman Ben
Bernanke said Friday. The Fed's efforts to pump up the economy and lower
unemployment have fallen short, Bernanke indicated in remarks at a
conference at Princeton University in New Jersey, where he once taught
economics.
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* NAR:
Home sales edge up in August but market still suffers New York Daily News
09/23/2010 A small spurt in existing home sales last month did little to
straighten the slouching housing market. Despite a 7.6 percent rise in
previously occupied home sales, August was second only to July for the
month with the most discouraging reality rates in 15 years, reports the
Associated Press Thursday morning.
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*
More
than half exit foreclosure-relief program finance.yahoo.com
09/22/2010 The Obama administration's flagship mortgage-relief effort is
failing to ease the foreclosure crisis as more than half of those who have
enrolled have fallen out of the program. As of August, approximately
680,000 homeowners who applied to get their mortgage payments lowered, or
about 51 percent, have been disqualified, the Treasury Department said
Wednesday. That's up from about 48 percent in July.
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* GMAC
Mortgage halts evictions in 23 states, including Ohio Columbus Dispatch
09/21/2010 Ally Financial Inc.'s GMAC Mortgage unit has told brokers and
agents to halt evictions tied to foreclosures on homeowners in 23 states
including Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky and Pennsylvania. GMAC Mortgage may
"need to take corrective action in connection with some
foreclosures" in the affected states, according to a two-page memo
dated Sept. 17 and marked "urgent."
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*
Fed
moves closer to new action to help economy Denver Post
09/21/2010 The Federal Reserve, meeting for the last time before an
election that hinges on the weak economy, edged closer Tuesday to jumping
in to help and suggested it's more worried about prices falling than
rising. The central bank gathered as new figures showed some improvement in
home construction.
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* Walking
away from mortgage gets easier when neighbors do it Tampa Tribune
09/20/2010 Some of Tampa Bay's underwater homeowners may have to wait 15
years or longer to break even on a sale. Others simply won't wait that
long. They're cutting their losses now, defaulting on purpose, even though
they can afford to make their mortgage payments. And as more fed-up
homeowners walk away, it becomes more likely their neighbors will too,
according to a new survey from Fannie Mae, one of the nation's largest
providers of mortgages.
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* Auditors
find problems in tax-credit records Columbus Dispatch
09/19/2010 A new audit raises questions about the ability of the Internal
Revenue Service to handle key basics of the programs, such as determining
the year credit claimants actually purchased their houses, whether they
have retained the property as a principal residence, and even whether they
were alive when a tax-credit application was submitted in their name.
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* Americans
struggle to regain shrunken wealth Richmond Times-Dispatch
09/18/2010 Americans' long journey to regain the wealth they lost in the
recession is stalled. Households failed even to run in place during the
April-June quarter as sinking stock prices eroded wealth. Stocks have since
recovered about two-thirds of those losses. But based on last quarter's
data, household net worth would have to surge 23 percent to reach its
pre-recession peak.
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* Bond
Risks and How to Beat Them finance.yahoo.com
09/17/2010 The op-ed piece The
Great American Bond Bubble that I published on August 18 in The Wall
Street Journal with Jeremy Schwartz, Director of Research at WisdomTree
Investments, attracted both attention and controversy. That is what we
wanted. We claimed that, at today's prices, investors in government bonds
would regret their purchases just as investors in stocks did at the top of
the technology bubble a decade earlier.
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* Census
sends mixed signals on Ohio poverty Columbus Dispatch
09/16/2010 As food-stamp rolls surged by 21 percent in Ohio last year, the
U.S. Census says that the number of people living in poverty dropped by 0.4
percent - or 31,000 people. The Census acknowledged that the good news
could be simply a statistical error: instead using a two-year moving
average to smooth out the numbers, the percent of people in poverty in Ohio
increased.
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* California
homeowners to get $1.2 billion in help Los Angeles Daily News
09/15/2010 With as many as one in five California homeowners behind on
mortgage payments, nearly $1.2 billion will become available Nov. 1 to help
low- and moderate-income families stay in their homes, officials said
Wednesday. Administered by the California Housing Finance Agency, the Keep
Your Home program will provide funding for home-loan modification programs
to help troubled mortgage holders.
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* Tight
global banking rules to be enacted slowly San Francisco Chronicle
09/14/2010 Bankers and analysts said new global rules could mean less money
available to lend to businesses and consumers, but praised a decision to
leave plenty of time - until 2019 - before the financial stability
requirements come into full force. The Basel III rules, which will
gradually require banks to hold greater capital buffers to absorb potential
losses, are likely to affect the credit industry by imposing stricter
discipline on credit cards, mortgages and other loans.
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*
Homeowners
who bought in 2003 would break even Tampa Tribune
09/13/2010 Homeowners are finding bittersweet news in their mailboxes as
they receive property tax estimates. Home values are down way down in most
cases falling back to 2003 levels. The good news: taxes, which jumped along
with home prices, also are down. Some are paying just a fraction of what
they paid a few years ago.
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* Successful
Investing: Will dramatic run-up in real estate funds last? Richmond Times-Dispatch
09/12/2010 Real estate investment trusts up, but will that last? Investors
are chasing yields, and former homeowners are moving into apartments. That
combination has provided the one-two punch in 2010 of real estate
investment trusts (REITs), those dividend-producing investments that trade
as stocks and use investor capital to purchase properties.
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* Families
gain stability with federal money that spurs buys of foreclosed houses
Palm Beach Post
09/12/2010 The federal government's multibillion-dollar plan to prop up
communities spoiled by foreclosed and abandoned homes is beginning to make
a difference in real estate-ravaged Palm Beach County. After sputtering to
a start 18 months ago, the Neighborhood Stabilization Program saw its first
home buyers move into formerly foreclosed properties this summer.
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*
HUD
clears inspectors in apartments controversy Columbus Dispatch
09/11/2010 An audit has found that federal inspectors properly monitored
renovations at six local apartment complexes that defaulted on federally
backed loans and turned into run-down dumps, a conclusion that angered the
lawmaker who asked for an investigation.
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* Nation's
Housing: Beware the credit repair pitch Richmond Times-Dispatch
09/11/2010 Recession-hammered homeowners' credit scores are on the decline
across the country, say scoring industry experts, and that makes more
consumers vulnerable to scams that purport to erase delinquencies,
judgments, foreclosures and other problems from files at the three national
credit bureaus -- Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. What sort of scams?
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* Keep
your hands off my mansion, says Russian billionaire's wife Palm Beach Post
09/10/2010 Russian fertilizer mogul Dmitri Rybolovlev owns a $95 million
Palm Beach mansion that he bought from Donald Trump, plus a trove of
artwork that would rival any museum, including works by Vincent van Gogh,
Pablo Picasso and Claude Monet. In short, he has all the luxuries that one
would expect a man worth billions of dollars to possess. Now his estranged
wife, Elena, wants her share of them, too.
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* Introducing,
at Bank of America: a new type of branch Charlotte Observer
09/09/2010 Bank of America is preparing to test some new changes in its
branches, letting customers videoconference with financial advisers and
moving other advisers directly into the branches to make them more
accessible. Early next year, the Charlotte bank will convert about a dozen
branches in the Washington, D.C., area and Los Angeles into so-called
specialty stores, and plans to eventually open more around the country,
including in Charlotte.
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* Ask
the HOA Expert realestate.yahoo.com
09/08/2010 Concealing (password protecting) information that an informed
buyer needs to know is a major weakness of the HOA system.
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*
Churches
not exempt from nations foreclosure problems Dayton Daily News
09/07/2010 Pekin Road Baptist Church and the former Ridgeville Community
Church are local examples of a negative national trend in the American
mortgage industry. Since December 2007, the number of foreclosure
proceedings brought against churches has tripled compared with the previous
seven years, according to a review of the Thomson Reuters Westlaw legal
database which tracks foreclosures.
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*
Courts
work to clear housing cases Sarasota Herald-Tribune
09/06/2010 When attorneys and judges complain that foreclosures are
clogging the courts, this is what they are talking about: roughly 24,000
properties in Sarasota and Manatee counties are in foreclosure but have not
been retaken, and many have seen no legal activity in almost a year. But as
local court officials start to work their way through the backlog,
reviewing the status of each case in a sort of closet-cleaning, many foreclosures
appear to be simply forgotten cases that were resolved some time ago.
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* Homeowner
fees 'like extortion,' homeowner says Tampa Tribune
09/05/2010 The op-ed piece The
Great American Bond Bubble that I published on August 18 in The Wall
Street Journal with Jeremy Schwartz, Director of Research at WisdomTree
Investments, attracted both attention and controversy. That is what we
wanted. We claimed that, at today's prices, investors in government bonds
would regret their purchases just as investors in stocks did at the top of
the technology bubble a decade earlier.
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*
Stanislaus
County short sales pose threat Modesto Bee
09/05/2010 Sick and tired of foreclosure headaches, a bank jumps at a short
sale offer, even though the deal means a modest loss on paper. But the
lender -- and the entire community -- would suffer less if the agent had
been honest. The agent hid much better offers, or refused to take them,
because he wanted the bank to see only one. His own.
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* Credit
Unions deserve more lending ability Oakland Press
09/04/2010 Small businesses, the lifeblood of job growth in Michigan and
across the country, are being squeezed from all directions. Its
particularly tough to get loans, but credit unions are in a unique position
to make loans to help small businesses turn things around.
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*
As
homes languish on market, owners forced to become landlords Denver Post
09/03/2010 A growing number of homeowners are finding out what it means to
be a landlord after failing to sell their homes in one of the worst housing
slumps in history. With home prices down nationwide, many don't want to
take a huge loss when they decide to move. They want to wait to see whether
they can rebuild their equity. So they find tenants.
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* Most
Homebuyers Have No Regrets realestate.yahoo.com
09/02/2010 The Great Recession may have drained the equity from millions of
homes, but when it comes to making what's often the greatest purchase of
all, the vast majority of homeowners are resting easy. An overwhelming 90
percent of homeowners say they don't regret buying their current home,
according to a new study by Bankrate, Inc.
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*
Partnership
helps numerous homeowners Columbus Dispatch
09/01/2010 When Monica Kendrix-Thomas and her husband, Quasi, began to shop
for their first home, they had a lot to learn about everything from loan
documents to the cost of ownership. Thats where the Columbus Housing
Partnership stepped in.
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