Monthly Archives: February 2012

As the baby-boomer generation ages and the availability of income after retirement diminish, there has been a clear demand for ways for people to tap into the equity in their homes in new and innovative ways. Enter the rise of … Continue reading →

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae may have gotten good news from their regulator which lifted the corporations’ portfolio caps, but their earnings reports for the year just ended were pretty devastating. Read More Now

Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday that Fannie Mae is proposing to ban the use of appraisals by a lender’s employees or those arranged by mortgage brokers. The proposed change would mean that Fannie Mae would no longer authorize its lending … Continue reading →

I can’t decide what was more troublesome yesterday: the comically uninformed questions put to Big Ben regarding mortgage rates, or the comically inaccurate article printed by CNBC on the same subject. Whatever the case, the media is awash with analysts, … Continue reading →

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) announced Wednesday that it would be lifting the caps it had imposed several years ago to limit growth of Freddie Mac’s and Fannie Mae’s owned portfolios. Each of the GSE’s has also … Continue reading →

The Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development jointly released their monthly report on new home sales early Wednesday morning. The report showed new home sales declined once again, this time to a seasonally adjusted annual … Continue reading →

Mortgage rates continued to grow in the most recent week, now approaching very close to the level of interest rates at the beginning of the year. Mortgage application volume decreased… Read More Now

Two reports on house prices were released on Tuesday and neither was happy news for homeowners or for the real estate industry. The S&P/Case Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index showed that the decline in house prices accelerated in the … Continue reading →

Despite the many programs gearing up or in place to help homeowners resolve problems with their mortgages, foreclosure related activities continued to increase in January. But, perhaps partially because of these programs, the rate of increase appears to be slowing … Continue reading →