Real Estate NewsMortgage News DailyPBS and Bloomberg Charges Against Insurance Companies Draw FireKatrina may have marked the end for this lack of regulation. As has been widely reported, one victim of the storm was Senator Trent Lott, the powerful Republican Senator from Mississippi whose expensive Gulf Coast home disappeared completely into Katrina's maw. Lott was insured by State Farm and after the company refused to pay one cent of his claim based on the water v. wind argument we talked about in part one of this article, Lott sued. He and the company agreed to an undisclosed settlement this spring but Lott is still angry. He has.... Read More NowNew Home Sales Register Improvement Over JuneSales of new homes improved slightly in July with a seasonally adjusted annual sales pace of 870,000, up 2.8 percent above the revised June sales figures. The June number had been particularly dismal at an annualized 834,000 units, well below the 895,000 units analysts had been expecting. The final figure for June, while still well below the expected number, was 846,000, 12,000 above what had been initially reported. Read More NowCountrywide Rating Watch Revised By FitchFitch Ratings announced Thursday that it has revised its Rating Watch on Countrywide Financial Corp. (CFC) and its related subsidiaries from "Negative" to "Evolving." This revised rating signifies that Fitch may upgrade, downgrade or affirm the current rating once they have gathered additional information. Fitch believes that residual effects caused by these liquidity issues will have significant impact on origination volume and... Read More NowIndyMac To Resume Prime Jumbo Home LoansIndyMac Bank announced today that it will resume originating prime, single-family residential, full doc jumbo loans after they temporarily reduced the origination of these products due to the recent credit cruch in the secondary markets. Minimum credit standards for these products are: Read More NowCountrywide Gets Big Cash Infusion And May Survive CrisisSeveral more big lenders joined the junk pile this week but there was a piece of good news for the nation's largest mortgage lender which managed to survive a very tough couple of weeks and now appears capable of living to fight another day. Read More NowUptick in Mortgage Rates Not a Result of Subprime ProblemsMortgage rates increased in every category last week according to surveys released by Freddie Mac and by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Jay Brinkmann, MBA's vice president of research and economics cautioned that,"Given the current turmoil in the mortgage market, week-to-week changes in the purchase applications index should be treated with... Read More NowLehman Brothers Shuts Down BNC Mortgage Cutting 1200 JobsThe casualties continue to mount as Lehman Brothers announced today that it will be shutting down its subprime mortgage lending unit, BNC Mortgage LLC. BNC was one of the top 20 subprime producers in 2006, originating over $14 Billion in loans. Read More NowHousing Starts Hit Ten Year Low While Builder Confidence Sets Even A Longer RecordResidential building permits and housing starts continued to fall in July with the latter measure of the nation's economic health dropping more than at any time since January 1997. NAHB Chief Economist David Seiders cited the subprime mortgage situation as being a part of the problem but said, "... the government-related parts of the mortgage market still are functioning well and..." Read More NowHomeowners Insurance Industry Roasted By PBS, BloombergPBS interviewed homeowners who said that their coverage had been switched by their company from "full replacement" to "extended replacement" coverage before the fire. When they questioned their agents they were told that extended replacement was much better than full replacement "yet, once claims were submitted, they were offered settlements that came nowhere near covering their rebuilding costs." Read More NowBig Players Call On OFHEO to Rethink GSE DecisionSeveral key players have rung in on the decision by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) to retain limits on the mortgage portfolios owned by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. "This emergency measure is not only important to restore confidence in the mortgage market for current and aspiring home buyers, but it would also allow Fannie and Freddie to engage in subprime foreclosure relief efforts across the country before the 'October surprise' of subprime resets further shocks the mortgage markets." Read More NowOpen House Listings | Real Estate Agents | Real Estate Search |
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