LPS Data Shows GSE Foreclosure Starts Are Accelerating – DS News
From May to June, foreclosures initiated by Fannie and Freddie jumped 21 percent.
HAMP Report Revised After Analysts Question New Metric – HuffPo
“In an effort to review and better explain the methodology, we learned from our program administrator, Fannie Mae, that not all cancelled loans were included in the underlying information provided to Treasury,” Paustenbach continued. “The error caused inconsistent reporting of permanent modifications during the snapshots reported. These omissions have impacted our previous analysis… with respect to the performance of HAMP permanent modifications.”
Inside Our Toxic Asset: A $200 Million Mortgage Scheme – NPR
With each sale, someone would take out a loan that was more than big enough pay off the previous loan. The players would split the remaining cash.
The Real Risk With Chinese Banks: Their Corporate Culture – TBI
The decision to use China’s commercial banks as the main conduit for stimulus spending, rather than responsible lending, undermined the progress that was being made towards building a new kind of banking culture.
Homeowners Association Foreclosures: Necessary or Extortion? – Minyanville
In April 2005, Pamela Bernhardt, a 52-year-old realtor, was finishing $48,000 in renovations on her two-story rental home, which she and her husband owned free-and-clear. She arrived at the house and found a small, handwritten note posted on the front door. It notified her that the home had been sold at a foreclosure sale seven months earlier for nonpayment of a delinquent $420 assessment fee. The house sold for $1,600 with no other competitive bids.
European Funding Worst In A Year – Zero Hedge
All of Europe is now caught in a pan-continental liquidity Catch 22, in which more intervention will just make the central banks even more critical to the continued functioning of the financial sector.
Just how risky are China’s housing markets? – Naked Capitalism
Real prices more than doubled over the past decade, with appreciation rates escalating at the beginning of 2007 and then again in early 2009. The most recent data show a record 41% (annualized) growth rate for the first quarter of 2010.
Figure 1. Constant quality price index for newly-built private housing in 35 major Chinese cities, 2000-2010
Source: Wu, Gyourko and Deng (2010). The underlying data source is the Institute of Real Estate Studies, Tsinghua University. See the discussion in Wu, Gyourko and Deng (2010) for more on how these indexes are created.But it was not high price levels alone that convinced Case and Shiller (2003) and Shiller (2005) that US house prices had become unsustainable – it was the all-time high price-to-rent and price-to-income ratios.
How much is this home worth? – Patrick.net
“All I want to know is what it would rent for. From that, I can decide what it’s worth.”
A Decade of Declining House Prices – ICH
The housing depression will last for a decade or more. This is by design. The Fed has been working with the banks to withhold inventory so prices do not fall too fast or too far. That way the banks can manage their write-downs without slipping into insolvency. But what’s good for the banks is bad for the country. Capital impairment at the banks, means no credit expansion in the near-term. It means the economy will continue to contract, unemployment will remain high, and deflation will push down wages and prices. Everyone will pay for the mortgage-backed securities scam that was engineered by the banks.
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