It is really a shame to see what has happened to the FHA. Prior to the subprime bubble, the FHA has a good record with providing low down payment loans to borrowers. Before readers scoff, it had a simple secret: it screened borrowers. And the old-fashioned process was sufficiently time-consuming that the prospective homeowners also […]
Read more...The United Arab Emirates offered a reassuring statement today after sending a bit more tough-minded message yesterday. The markets will not doubt take heart from the cheery word today, but we need to remind ourselves that the fat lady hasn’t sung yet. Unlike the conduct of banking authorities in the US towards their wayward charges, […]
Read more...For the record, zero is a very impressive achievement, so we have to give the Treasury department credit where credit is due. From Bloomberg: More than 650,994 loan revisions had been started through the Obama administration’s Home Affordable Modification Program as of last month, from about 487,081 as of September, according to the Treasury. None […]
Read more...By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns. Yves is stuffed again today, so I am going to post at least once or twice. Hopefully, we will also see something from Jesse or George as well. This is a post I wrote overnight about rising delinquencies and shadow housing inventory. I am not convinced house prices in […]
Read more...About a week ago, I got this message from a reader: I heard a rumor from a very well placed source that BOFA will foreclose 500,000 houses over the next 10 months. They plan to move these houses very aggressively; they will go to auction 90 days from foreclosure if they are not sold by […]
Read more...By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since them, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. A number of economists, economic policymakers, regulators, and central bankers have attempted to explain away their failure to both […]
Read more...McClatchy, the only major US news organization to question the Iraq war until is was obvious to all that it was a misguided exercise in neocon hubris, has started a series on Goldman’s famed “short subprime” exercise. While the timing and overall outline are not new (as to when and allegedly why the investment bank […]
Read more...Hoisted from comments: I am a lawyer who has been involved in corporate finance for over 25 years. First, if you beleive that securitization offers benefits (cost reductions) to consumers then MERS is not per se a bad thing in that it reduces overall transation costs which should in part be passed on to the […]
Read more...Submitted by Edward harrison of Credit Writedowns Yves covered this in an earlier post overnight. Here’s my take. This is probably my fourth post on the tangled web woven by securitization, which puts a considerable distance between home owners and mortgagees which own a mortgage. The issue is causing huge problems in bankruptcy and foreclosure […]
Read more...Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times reports on the latest instance of judges taking issue with the rather haphazard procedures of lenders and servicers in handling mortgage assignments. As most people know (and many by first hand experience) mortgages often pass through a lot of hands, and the securitization industry has played plenty fast […]
Read more...This is starting to get interesting, although it is far from conclusive. Massachusetts Land Court judge Keith Long reaffirmed a 2009 ruling (Ibanez) that invalidated foreclosures on two properties because the lenders did not hold clear title to them at the time of the foreclosure sale. Now this decision is still subject to appeal, and […]
Read more...The New York Times has an article about the woes at the FHA which has enough omissions of relevant history so as to render it misleading at points. Mind you, the main message of the story is sound, namely, that the FHA, long a mainstay of lower-income housing, is suffering increasing losses, because it has […]
Read more...There has been a peculiar disconnect between the “the crisis is over, on with the recovery” drumbeat of news, and the sobering reality that a good deal of credit bubble overhang still remains to be dealt with. One of the biggest areas is commercial real estate. Various experts, including Apollo Management’s Leon Black warned of […]
Read more...The Wall Street Journal provides a short update on the weak conditions in the apartment rental market. Vacancies have just hit a 23 year high, and experts expect them to increase. The story, however, is largely silent on the implications for the housing market are concerned. Some have argued that the housing market is stabilizing, […]
Read more...The media seems curiously indifferent to the continued and deserved anger of the public regarding bank bailouts. Of course, the fundamental problem is that we were sold a bill of goods. The money was clearly going to fill existing black holes in financial firms’ balance sheets. That would have been a legitimate use of taxpayer […]
Read more...