Monday, January 23, 2012
CNN Money
Federal officials hope to launch a pilot program in early 2012 to convert government-owned foreclosures into rental properties.
Read the full story
http://money.cnn.com/2012/01/09/news/economy/foreclosures_rental/index.htm?iid=HP_River
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Last week, the U.S. Congress passed a “minibus” appropriations measure that will continue to fund the government and includes a provision to reinstate the FHA loan limit in high-cost areas for two years. President Obama signed the measure into law Friday.
The higher Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and FHA conforming loan limits of $729,750 expired Oct. 1, when it was reduced to $625,500. The passage of H.R. 2112 provides for an extension of FHA-insured mortgages at the higher level through December 2013. It also provides for a short-term extension of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) through Dec. 16, 2011. C.A.R. and NAR strongly urge Congress to work on a five-year NFIP reauthorization bill to provide certainty and avoid further disruption to real estate markets.
“C.A.R. is pleased the Senate and House were able to come to a reasonable compromise on extending the FHA loan limit to ensure affordable home financing for middle-class buyers,” said 2012 C.A.R. President LeFrancis Arnold. “However, we are disappointed that the Senate and House could not agree on increasing the loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, especially since the Senate bill included a premium on high-cost loans that protected U.S. taxpayers from footing the costs.”
C.A.R. and the NAR have long advocated making permanent higher loan limits.
More info
Monday, November 21, 2011
Lower home prices and interest rates led to an increase in home affordability in the third quarter, the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® reported.
Making sense of the story
Monday, October 24, 2011
A 4 percent mortgage sounds too good to be true – and for more than 90 percent of borrowers, it is.
Read the full story
http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/19/real_estate/mortgage_rates/index.htm?iid=Lead
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Today’s volatile housing market demands that home buyers take an exacting, almost surgical approach to completing a mortgage application in order to speed the paperwork through the narrowed arteries of the home loan pipeline.
Profusely sweating the details of a mortgage application gives lenders fewer reasons to reject your quest for the American Dream. And the need for speed is crucial if you want to beat today’s realty market clock which frequently resets itself.
The real estate market’s mortgage credit squeeze tightens one day then eases the next. So there’s no room for vagueness or foot dragging when completing a mortgage application.
Here are your marching orders.
Tighter underwriting regulations, fewer mortgage options, appraisers trying to keep tabs on value changes, and several recent federal interventions to help cure the housing hangover this year alone, are all conditions that reflect the unsettled nature of a housing market in the throes of correction.
It’s like marching into hostile territory. Actually, it is marching into hostile territory.
Market conditions insist on laser-focused offensive of market monitoring and, when the time is right, fast-as-a-speeding-bullet action. Hesitate at the wrong moment and your mortgage action — along with your dreams — could go up is smoke.
Case in point: mortgage rates plunged recently just days after the most far-reaching federal effort yet was launched to stem the credit chaos spawned by the housing hangover. That’s doesn’t mean rates will remain reduced.
Control of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae recently went to the new Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), spawned by the “Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008’s” statutory merger of the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB) and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.
“The full weight of the federal government backing Fannie and Freddie is huge! For the short term, rates have improved to their best levels since 2005. The spread between the larger conforming loans and the loans of $417,000 and less has almost been eliminated,” said Quincy Virgilio, president elect of the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors.
Virgilio, added “My thoughts are, if you were thinking about buying, it’s time to act. I believe we have a short window of opportunity to take advantage of the current lending environment.”
Virgilio concedes, once the elation about government intervention subsides in the fickle investment markets and the new regulator gets to work, rates could just as quickly shift the other way.
Other experts agree.
“While the short-term impact of the Treasury’s actions served to calm the markets and restore confidence, in the longer term, these entities need to be able to fulfill their historic mission,” said California Association of Realtors’ Executive Vice President Joel Singer.
“A privatized Fannie and Freddie will short-circuit the countercyclical role the GSEs (government sponsored enterprises) have played during precarious times in real estate markets,” Singer added. “Without an institutionalized mortgage-backed securities market, mortgage capital will be less predictable and more expensive, and adjustable-rate mortgages could become the standard loan for home buyers, as could higher down payment requirements.”
Says Virgilio, plain and simple, “For the next few months, it’s time to act.”
In “How Can You Speed Up the Approval of the Loan?” the Federal Reserve suggests:
Written by Broderick Perkins
