Mortgage News

Apartment prices in the typically resilient Manhattan market plunged in the second quarter by the largest annual amount in decades, data released Thursday showed.

Mortgage rates in the U.S. fell this week, easing concern that a Federal Reserve plan to lower the cost of home loans had lost momentum.

Despite 52 failed banks in 2009 and many more to follow, Sheila Bair, FDIC Chairman, has wisely chosen to restrict private capital investments in failed banks to qualified buyers only. In mid May of this year, Ms.

There were seven more failed banks this week on July 2, 2009 as detailed below: 2009 has now seen a total of 27 more failed banks than occurred for all of 2008. The latest 7 banking closures by the FDIC brings total banking failures for 2009 to 52.

Struggling homeowners may soon be getting more help from Uncle Sam. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan announced today that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will begin refinancing mortgages with loan-to-value ratios of 125 percent.

Beazer Homes USA Inc . agreed to pay as much as $53 million to the government and homeowners to resolve allegations of mortgage fraud, the Justice Department said.

Banks are buying the mortgage-backed bonds that hobbled the global financial system, helping to sustain higher prices for the debt, according to Federal Reserve data, investors and traders.

Many US officials at the Treasury and Federal Reserve have criticized Japan's policy of propping up Zombie banks and therefore prolonging their banking crisis. The theory was that the weakest banks made the worst lending decisions and should be allowed to fail instead of being subsidized with taxpayer dollars. Consider the case of Central ...

The collapse in prices has finally come to your neighborhood, too, Mr. Comfortable. Has the housing market scraped bottom? Not in some of the wealthier neighborhoods--places like New York City's Greenwich Village, Santa Monica, Calif.

The person who caused the current world recession can be found not on Wall Street or the city of London, but instead could be you, and your next-door neighbor--the people who put so much of their savings and credit to buy a house.

Financial institutions face a barrage of challenges to their business and financial profiles, including further losses and regulatory reform Midway through 2009, global banks can expect to experience further losses, which are now emanating from the more predictable loan portfolios.

The FDIC Economic Landscape Report details how the out of control lending mania created the perfect housing storm. The largest housing bust in US history centers in four states which had the largest housing price increases and are now suffering the consequences of a boom gone bust.

President Barack Obama asked Congress on Tuesday to create a new agency to police the fine print on consumer products like credit cards and mortgages and determine what fees, penalties and interest rates are fair.

New Jersey Attorney General Anne Milgram today unveiled three separate mortgage fraud indictments, including a $1.15 million conspiracy to steal identities for fraudulent loans and credit cards.

The number of mortgages approved for house purchase rose for the fourth month in a row during May as buyers continued to return to the property market, figures showed today.

McClatchy & Co., one of the companies hardest hit by the crisis in the newspaper industry, was honored Monday for its coverage of the economic meltdown.

The government's plan to enable banks to dump troubled assets is facing troubles of its own.

Since the beginning of the year, major banks have raised over $200 billion in capital, far in excess of the $75 billion of new capital that the government stress tests had called for. The market prices of major bank stocks have recovered dramatically since March, indicating that Wall Street investors see a recovery in the banking industry.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Citigroup Inc. are expanding in jumbo mortgages used to buy the most expensive homes, helping revive a market that shriveled amid a three-year jump in homeowner defaults.

The window might be quickly closing on consumers' opportunity to refinance at great rates - not their home mortgages, but their term life insurance, experts say.