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homeowner: MERS in middle of new mortgage foreclosure mess - 10/18/10 06:28 PM
MERS is hardly a household name to many homeowners but the company now finds itself tossed right in the middle of the latest and rapidly-heating home loan challenge. It stands for Mortgage Electronic Registration System and the name pretty much says what it does. It records electronically, in proprietary software, mortgages that have been originated throughout the country, having currently over 65 million of them in its books, or better said in its servers.
The standard practice still is that local clerks record all mortgages and when ownership changes a new paper-based entry is created and notarized. Of course, all this … (15 comments)

homeowner: Mortgage lenders about to face 45-day short sale approval deadline - 09/27/10 03:14 PM
The current real estate meltdown has been a true testing ground for anyone involved in its devastating turbulence. Homeowners have watched helplessly as their property values have headed south with little resistance. Home loan providers have worked under pressure for years to stay afloat in choppy waters full of creepy icebergs and many other deadly maritime hazards. Real estate agents are fighting to secure deals in a marketplace shrunk to a flat pie on life support from a full-blown strawberry cheesecake. The support industries are in it as deep as anyone else.
Something intriguing that could be rather meaningful for many … (15 comments)

homeowner: Mortgage walk-aways poised to accelerate - 09/16/10 10:33 PM
It appears relative calm has descended on the long-suffering housing market, especially when it comes to price movement. For months now home values have shown signs of stability, and even moderate increases in some areas. Real estate observers of course like to see that but are generally unconvinced that a sustainable real estate recovery is imminent. Too many hazards remain in its way, among them the still notable oversupply, a weak job market and the potential of many more mortgage walk-aways.
Yes, that walk-away - a term that has finessed its way into today's popular real estate vocabulary - where a … (12 comments)

homeowner: Mortgage foreclosure pulls home's price down 27%, says MIT study - 08/18/10 10:22 PM
When major upheaval pummels a real estate market, it as a rule leads to home value depreciation. That's the easy part. The hard part is to try to put an actual number on the price reversal. A team led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or more commonly MIT, recently conducted some deep research to determine how much a home's value deteriorates because of a foreclosure. The current housing and mortgage meltdown obviously got them thinking and they decided to dig up some realistic answers.
The group looked at 1.8 million real estate sales in Massachusetts spanning from 1987 all the … (11 comments)

homeowner: Fannie Mae's new strategic default rule could amount to very little - 07/30/10 04:05 PM
Fannie Mae recently took an assertive step, in its own mind at least, to stem the growing tendency of mortgage borrowers pulling off strategic defaults. In that homeowners who could afford their payments choose to walk away from the obligation anyway. The GSE went ahead and added another category to the new policy. Home loan recipients who fail to do a workout in good faith also fall under the spell of its new guidelines. What this all means is that property owners fitting these parameters would be ineligible for mortgages backed by Fannie Mae for seven long years from the recorded … (46 comments)

homeowner: Southern Nevada June home sales up - median price lower - 07/14/10 04:41 PM
Las Vegas homeowners and real estate observers have been looking for clear direction the local housing market could be happy about but it's refusing to cooperate. It seems to have settled on a typically erratic path that markets display when they reach the bottom on a downward cycle - or are very near it -  and just can't decide how to shake the gloominess off and embark on a climb out for better days. Last month's real estate statistics reflect that rather well.
GLVAR, or Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, recounts for its rapt audience that 3,360 resale homes were … (6 comments)

homeowner: Mortgage foreclosure assistance authorized for worst-hit states - 06/24/10 04:55 PM
As the housing sector kept sucking for more oxygen, Washington announced back in February the Hardest Hit Fund worth $1.5 billion that was designed to help states in serious housing peril and asked them at the time, as a condition to get a slice of the money, to submit creative programs that would lend a hand to homeowners struggling with mortgage payments. The plans from Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan and Nevada have now been okayed by the Treasury and the assigned funds are ready to begin flowing to the states' Housing Finance Agencies, or HFA, tasked to administer their use.
California … (13 comments)

homeowner: Curious strategic mortgage default legislation proposed - 06/13/10 10:33 PM
Washington has already come up with some unusual and at times confusing legislation during this enduring housing collapse to correct perceived deficiencies. HVCC – the Home Valuation Code of Conduct – addressing the alleged appraisal problems of the recent past is one. The new RESPA – Real Estate Settlement and Procedures Act – is another that has led to many complaints and questions from the mortgage and real estate industries and puzzles the consumer as well. More of the same could be forthcoming.
House Republicans presented a surprise rider at the end of an FHA-related debate the other day that would … (14 comments)

homeowner: Home-grown mortgage modification making headway - 06/02/10 04:23 PM
Creativity is the spice of life in the mortgage loan modification business. When the bottom fell crashing out of the real estate market and homeowners began sliding in droves toward foreclosure, home loan providers at first just watched the carnage from afar, unwilling to lift a finger for help. Soon the ominous situation grew into a full-blown crisis and the government had to get involved because the private mortgage industry couldn't or wouldn't do much about it. Despite that, mortgage lenders still found novel ways to deny most homeowners the loan modification they were applying for. The original paperwork somehow got lost, … (4 comments)

homeowner: Housing starts could double by next year - 05/10/10 07:40 PM
New home construction has had it very tough over the last few years, despite appealing mortgage financing and first-time and move-up buyer tax incentives. The sector simply hasn't been able to compete much with the existing real estate market because of vast price differences. Values, for instance, have sunk up to 60% in Las Vegas that basically gives new construction little chance to generate any meaningful demand. Housing starts nationwide reached 554,000 units last year, a surprisingly high number considering the malaise still hovering over the residential real estate landscape, while at the top of the bubble in 2005 they were … (8 comments)

homeowner: Delinquent mortgage borrowers with PMI staging fragile comeback - 04/01/10 02:12 PM
Some good news are starting to sneak into the devastated real estate market from far-off directions. They may not mean all that much in the conventional big picture that usually chews over topics like foreclosures, short sales, home price drops and mortgage lender failures. Nevertheless, many small time indicators often give hints about which way the housing market is heading. One of these gems is the private mortgage insurance, or PMI, default rate.
Mortgage Insurance Companies of America, or MICA, keeps tabs on this and just released its latest report. In short, the trade group explains that 80,758 homeowners with PMIs … (6 comments)

homeowner: Las Vegas underwater homeowners to float by 2020? It's possible - 03/26/10 03:19 PM
Many Southern Nevada - including Mountains Edge, Summerlin, North Las Vegas, Henderson, Canyon Gate and Spanish Trail - mortgage borrowers are still dealing with the effects of the great real estate meltdown. Short sale has recently become a more acceptable avenue for home loan banks to address the lingering issue of delinquency, giving people a somewhat more palatable way out of a tight spot. Despite that, high mortgage foreclosure filings continue clouding the sandy landscape of Las Vegas valley. The once in a lifetime housing upheaval is by no means over and done with yet.
Sin City's homeowners have watched in … (17 comments)

homeowner: HOA fees going increasingly unpaid - creative legal remedy to help - 03/12/10 03:03 PM
Home Owners Associations are as vulnerable to the mortgage and real estate meltdown as banks, property owners and investors are. There is no escaping the wrath of the marketplace. Homeowners finding themselves in mortgage payment trouble often stop meeting their HOA responsibilities even before letting the loan itself go delinquent. That can spawn an unrelenting downward spiral where the HOA falls short on its fee collections and has to cut back on services and maintenance, while affected homeowners later on go into foreclosure and abandon their properties, leaving vacancies subject to blight and all sorts of ugly stuff. The end result … (8 comments)

homeowner: Southern Nevada real estate prices firming up in February - 03/10/10 04:42 PM
Las Vegas homeowners should be mildly encouraged about the direction housing prices are going nowadays. Well, they aren't actually going much of anywhere, and that's what's good about it. They have put the breaks on the slide that seemed to go on forever and are seemingly stabilizing. Mortgage borrowers whose property is underwater can now hope that values will soon start heading in the other direction, up that is. And eventually lift them from the painful, wallet-busting submersion, whenever that'll be.
GLVAR, or Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors, just released its latest stats for February to show that the median … (2 comments)

homeowner: Real estate transactions may be burdened by private transfer fees - 03/08/10 03:05 PM
The present housing and mortgage overload is by some estimates only halfway through its painful cycle, still desperately looking for traction to solve high mortgage foreclosure numbers, underwater homeowners by the millions, home loan providers with books still loaded with toxic paper and persistent oversupply. The complexity and severity of the collapse is testing the skills, creativity and persistence of the public and private sectors alike. Progress has been made on many fronts, but a lot more needs to be done.
While the focus now is largely on turning the pummeled housing and mortgage markets around, a new fee is quietly … (8 comments)

homeowner: Lender offering extra carrot to struggling homeowners - Las Vegas mortgage borrowers hoping to join in soon - 02/12/10 04:40 PM
The government has burned the midnight oil for months in an effort to help distressed homeowners deal with mortgage payments they can't afford and possibly find a way for them to stay in their homes. HAMP, or Home Affordable Modification Program, and other similar programs haven't really produced the results they were designed for, though. It is also almost single-handedly running the massive mortgage market today, pumping sufficient liquidity into it that in turn has kept interest rates record low. Despite its pro-active programs it can't do it alone. It needs the private home loan industry to play ball, which it simply … (6 comments)

homeowner: Short sale fraud accusations surface against prominent mortgage lenders - 01/19/10 10:51 PM
Homeowners who are upside down and facing mortgage payment trouble are increasingly being approved by their lenders to do a short sale, a process where the bank accepts less for the property than what the loan balance is. They amounted to roughly 12% of real estate sales at the end of 2009. Short sales generally are time-consuming and nerve-wracking and can cause to those involved in them heart palpitations and other physical harm. That often happens when there is only one mortgage, or lien, on the home.
When there is a second lien behind the first mortgage, things get even more … (12 comments)

homeowner: Las Vegas mortgages over $1 million now in default wringer - 12/19/09 11:16 PM
Early on after the real estate bubble burst the home loans that went bad were largely subprime and the general feeling then was that the defaults would pretty much stay in this particular segment. Lo and behold, slowly the Alt-A type of mortgage, once thought to be on really solid footing, started feeling the heat, too. The avalanche didn't stop there either. Defaults are now hitting the luxury homes that were supposed to somehow bypass the wrath of the mortgage gods, at least that's what many industry observers believed.
Mortgage payments on roughly 12% of loans over $1 million nationwide were … (8 comments)

homeowner: Mortgage overload attracts new remedy - Las Vegas homeowners take notice - 12/18/09 12:01 AM
The home loan mess is a tough customer to bring under control. Everyone agrees with that. The government and the private sector have tried all sorts of cures to change its course, with very little so far to show for their labors. Mortgage foreclosures are going to continue by some reliable estimates at least at the current pace well into the new year.
There is, however, a new creative initiative afoot to help restore the tattered mortgage market to health.
Behind the effort is a man called Lewie Ranieri, who is largely credited with crafting the mortgage-backed securities in the 1980s.These … (2 comments)

homeowner: Homeowners face another foreclosure hurdle - Las Vegas mortgage receivers potentially on the hook - 12/07/09 10:30 PM
Second mortgages are now starting to make their way into the ever-shifting foreclosure battlefield. As the housing market fell famously to pieces and took real estate values down with it, pushing scores of homeowners underwater, first mortgage holders were left holding the bag. That is if they had the only loan on the property. During the bubble that just visited the housing market home buyers often used a second mortgage to keep the down payment to a minimum, or nothing at all, and avoid paying PMI, or private mortgage insurance. 100% financing became quite popular those days.
When a foreclosure hits … (12 comments)