From NMN: It has been mind-blowing to find out that lenders and servicers have been offering defaulted borrowers up to $45,000 to work with them in a variation on the old Cash for Keys program. But sessions at the recent SourceMedia Loss Mitigation Conference in...
Now that Obamacare has made it this far, let's re-visit the tax on house sales. Here is a link to the FAQs from the NAR (hat tip to goaround for the reminder): http://www.realtor.org/small_business_health_coverage.nsf/pages/health_ref_faq_med_tax?opendocument The...
From MND: California's proposed Homeowner Bill of Rights, originally proposed by the state's attorney general Kamala Harris and covered here has been modified extensively following what the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) calls six weeks of intense negotiation...
Excerpted from Robert Shiller's editorial in the nytimes.com: Traditionally, we think of eminent domain law as applying to land and buildings. For example, a government can use eminent domain to seize real estate along a proposed new highway route so the highway can...
Are government programs finally starting to solve the housing crisis? From HW: The number of refinanced Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages nearly doubled in the first quarter as the largest banks launched the expanded Home Affordable Refinance Program. Servicers...
Hat tip to Kingside for sending this in, from thebaycitizen.org: Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan to use more than $400 million from a national foreclosure settlement to help balance the state budget would put struggling homeowners at risk of criminal scams, California housing...
Excerpted from MND: Between 2001 and 2006 the US housing market experienced a "housing bubble" wherein the prices of single-family homes increased an average of 12 percent each year. This increase was accompanied by mortgage debt that more than doubled from $5.1...
From Reuters: When Jennifer Anderson's family could no longer afford their mortgage and lost their home, she expected many years to pass before they would again become property owners. But less than two years later, in March, they purchased a $297,000 house outside...
From our friend Alejandro at the latimes.com: About half of the $410 million flowing into California's coffers from the national mortgage settlement with major banks will be pumped into the state's housing counselors and legal services agencies that help struggling...
An excerpt from MND: FHFA's REO-to-Rental Initiative, Burns said, is meant to complement the primary disposition strategies used by the GSEs and is intended as a pilot. Its goals are fairly limited: To gauge investor appetite for scattered site single-family rental...
