Real Estate and Mortgages

Home Mortgage Refinancing Plan. Finally a Good Idea

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[Update Feb 19 2008] See this recent article on President Obama’s $75 billion dollar plan to stem foreclosures and stabalize the housing market. It also covers who qualifies and when the programs start. ——– In an attempt to help struggling American homeowners, the U.S. Department of Treasury, HUD, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Freddie Mac, [...]

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Home Price Declines Catching up Globally

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I wrote a while back on how the US was leading home price declines earlier this year. Looks like the world has caught up to this unfortunate trend and pushed the relative US declines to the middle of the pack. As the most recent IMF economic report shows, the US median home prices declined by [...]

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Foreclosure Rescue Scams – Coming to your Neighborhood

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It seems that wherever there is an easy buck to be made (or stolen in this case) scam artists are on the prowl catching unsuspecting victims in their deceitful webs of misinformation. Earlier this year the biggest scams being perpetuated were around the IRS stimulus checks. Now with the housing slump and resultant spike in [...]

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Leverage 101 – The Real Cause of the Financial Crisis

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Much of the current financial market crisis is blamed on two main factors – poor risk management by company executives and the ultra-depressed housing market. Company management is paying the penalty with most failed CEO’s fired and years of lawsuits and regulatory probes ahead for implicated senior executives. The second factor, a depressed housing market, [...]

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House Prices decline around the world

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>It’s confirmed. The United States of America has suffered the largest home price decline in the western world over the last two years. The Economist provided a house price index which compared America’s 15% house price drops (based on the S&P/Case-Shiller national index) to a number of other developed countries. This goes a long way [...]

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Freeze Foreclosures! What’s next – Freeze credit card debt?

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Bloomberg reports that US banking committee senators have asked regulatory bodies (FHFA) now controlling mortgage giants Freddie and Fannie to freeze foreclosures for 90 days in order to “provide immediate relief to many homeowners” and let the companies “turn these non-performing loans into performing assets to minimize losses”. Lawmakers and bank regulators, including Federal Reserve [...]

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Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac takeover and conservatorship – Impacts and Outcomes

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The treasury along with the Federal Reserve and Federal Housing regulator (FHFA) announced a take over via conservatorship of the government sponsored entities of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. Current actions will definitely provide a cushion, but long term structural reform is needed to ensure this does not happen again and tax payer bailout losses [...]

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A look at the Pros and Cons of Reverse Mortgages

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Reverse mortgages are becoming an increasingly popular financing offering with our aging baby boomer population, looking for ways to unlock the value from their homes. Simply defined, reverse mortgages are a special type of home loan that lets a homeowner convert a portion of the equity in his or her home into cash. The equity [...]

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Weekly Wrap : housing relief bill outrage & good reads

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My article on the 2008 housing relief bill was recently republished at Seeking Alpha and based on the first response, it elicited some very strong and interesting follow-up comments. Here is the original comment from destroyed by divorce that got the ball rolling. (From Destroyed by divorce) I have a comment to this ignorant person [...]

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The housing crisis and wealth decimation

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“I just sold my house and lost $100,000…” “I can’t sell my house after 12 months, even after lowering the price by 30% ” “I am going to go broke if I can’t sell my house….” “Why can’t the government fix this housing crisis…” “I thought a house was a safe asset that went up [...]

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