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One Quarter of Mortgage Holders Sink Underwater By Steve Cook Real Estate Economy Watch ArticlePhotosListen.Share More than 11.3 million, or 24 percent, of all residential properties with mortgages, were in negative equity at the end of the fourth quarter of 2009, up from 10.7 million and 23 percent at the end of the third quarter of 2009. An additional 2.3 million mortgages were approaching negative equity at the end of last year, meaning they had less than five percent equity. Together, negative equity and near-negative equity mortgages accounted for nearly 29 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage nationwide,...

Let's spin this globe and take a look at things from a slightly different angle. If we could inventory the entire planet, every real, solid, tradable item we came across would belong to someone. Someone somewhere, or a group of someones would have bragging rights to each and every thing on this planet. Each one of these items that is the least bit tradable would have some sort of value attached to it. Of course some things are not tradable. For example, a mountain in the United States that has been designated by the collective as public land is not...

Unwinding bet on a Microsoft merger costs tycoon nine figures Pity the poor billionaire: Corporate raider Carl Icahn is still paying for last year's effort to marry Yahoo off to Microsoft. Icahn recently sold 12.7 million shares of Yahoo, new regulatory filings show, at less than $15. He acquired his stake at an average price of $25 a share last year in an effort to pressure Yahoo into accepting a takeover bid from Microsoft. That means he's taken a loss of about $130 million. And unless Yahoo's fortunes take an abrupt turn for the better, he's likely to face more...

This was absolutely breath-taking. The health care bill in the Senate version says the Secretary will establish (and enforce!) "gender" and race "standards" to ensure equity. Folks, they are going to define men and women, and ENSURE that transsexuals get access to "health care" that others will be denied; that there will be "race-based" health care to ensure fairness!!!!

Homeowner equity--the value of the part of our houses that we actually own--will likely end up down 70% from the peak. Think that will affect our spending? Everyone knows that U.S. house prices have fallen almost 30% from the peak. What is less well known is that Americans' equity in those houses--the part that American homeowners actually own--has fallen much further. Why? Because, despite all the foreclosures and write-offs, our total mortgage debt has only dropped slightly from its peak. When value falls and debt stays the same, equity gets crushed (See The Problem With Debt). If house prices end...

OAKLAND, CA - More senior citizens are looking into reverse mortgage loans as a way to offset the income that has vanished as the result of losses in their investments. This is from data gleaned by Golden Gateway Financial here from usage data for its online reverse mortgage calculator. However, on the other side of the equation, the company said, homeowners are seeing their home values drop, as evidenced by changes in the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices. "For many older Americans, the time to act to stave off continuing losses is now," said Eric Bachman, founder and chief executive of...

It should come as no surprise that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a Republican. In that era, almost all black Americans were Republicans. Why? From its founding in 1854 as the anti-slavery party until today, the Republican Party has championed freedom and civil rights for blacks. And as one pundit so succinctly stated, the Democrat Party is as it always has been, the party of the four S's: Slavery, Secession, Segregation and now Socialism.It was the Democrats who fought to keep blacks in slavery and passed the discriminatory Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. The Democrats started the Ku...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Democrats issued a counterproposal to the Treasury Department's $700 billion Wall Street bailout plan on Monday that would give the government a stake in firms unloading assets under the plan, and limit the pay of corporate executives involved. The Democrats also want to set up an oversight board that would include the chairmen of the Federal Reserve, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp and Securities and Exchange Commission to limit the Treasury's otherwise largely unfettered powers, according to a legislative proposal released by the office of U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Connecticut, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. According...

The study sought to shed light on the neurological underpinnings of moral decision-making, said Ming Hsu, a fellow at the U. of I.'s Beckman Institute and co-principal investigator. (Credit: Photo by L. Brian Stauffer) ScienceDaily (May 10, 2008) — Which is better, giving more food to a few hungry people or letting some food go to waste so that everyone gets a share" A study appearing in Science finds that most people choose the latter, and that the brain responds in unique ways to inefficiency and inequity. The study, by researchers at the University of Illinois and the California Institute...

IT was the nation’s lending institutions and mortgage originators that got us into this credit mess, but it is consumers, taxpayers and those companies’ shareholders who will end up shouldering most of the costs. The latest example of this is in the mass freezing of home equity lines of credit going on across the country. Reeling from losses on their wretched loan decisions of recent years, lenders are preventing borrowers with pristine credit and significant equity in their homes from tapping into credit lines that they paid dearly to secure. In the last 30 days, lenders have sent several hundred...

ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) - The white bus rumbles into the quiet suburban neighborhood, heading toward a foreclosed home that sits empty. Neighbors, young and old, cock their heads in curiosity or point at the slow-moving coach. Once the vehicle stops, about 20 potential buyers file out and become detectives, opening and closing cabinets and drawers, knocking on walls and asking about the price, the previous owners and what repairs may be needed. Welcome to the Foreclosure Bus Tour, a six-hour expedition to show Orlando-area homes and educate potential buyers on the vagaries of snatching foreclosures in a state where the...

Federal Reserve Report Shows Homeowner Equity Dipping Below 50 Percent, Lowest on Record NEW YORK (AP) -- Americans' percentage of equity in their homes has fallen below 50 percent for the first time on record since 1945, the Federal Reserve said Thursday. Homeowners' percentage of equity slipped to a revised lower 49.6 percent in the second quarter of 2007, the central bank reported in its quarterly U.S. Flow of Funds Accounts, and declined further to 47.9 percent in the fourth quarter -- the third straight quarter it was under 50 percent. That marks the first time homeowners' debt on their...

Bill and Elaine Nolan paid top dollar when they bought their Tiburon house a few years ago at the height of real estate frenzy. Now, of course, the market is cooling rapidly. So Bill Nolan, who deals with money all day long as a partner in an investment management firm, wanted to diversify. He turned to a startup based on a new concept: Let homeowners tap their equity without taking on debt.

Any equity selloff as large as yesterday's will produce a multitude of explanations. Among other culprits, we heard about "overbought" Chinese stocks that were due for a correction, a weak durable goods report, the Kabul explosion aimed at Vice President Dick Cheney (see below), and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan for declaring Monday that a "recession" was possible later this year. Our own "whodunit" contribution would point to the mortgage-related markets, which sold off nearly as much as stocks. This reflects the cracks appearing in the housing credit markets, especially in subprime loans but with some damage up the...

Help! Put on your economics hats out there. I'm trying to decide whether I should convert my variable rate home equity line to a fixed loan now that The Fed has raised the rates again. Is this just one more rate hike in a long line of future hikes; or is it a post-Katrina reaction? My equity line started at 3.5% and is now at 6.5%. I can lock into a fixed loan at 7.2%. I know there are a lot of Freepers out there who have a wealth of accumulated real estate and financial savvy. I was hoping to...

As they happily watch their houses swell in value, Americans are changing their attitudes toward mortgage debt. Increasingly, a home is no longer a nest egg whose equity should never be touched, but a seemingly magical ATM enabling the owner to live it up or just live. Homeowners took $59 billion in cash out of their houses in the second quarter, double the amount in the 2004 quarter and 16 times the average rate of the mid-1990s, according to data released this month by mortgage giant Freddie Mac. People are cashing out so quickly that the term "homeowner" may soon...

Yesterday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell” my bullish opponent in a "Bull vs. Bear" debate rebutted my argument that Americans saved too little by claiming that the methodology used to calculate savings was flawed as it omits the accumulation of home equity. This foolish argument, which amounts to nothing more than Wall Street’s attempt to rationalize away a chronic problem, reveals a complete lack of understanding of the concept of savings, and the important role that savings plays in a free market economy. Savings represent foregone consumption deferred to a future date. It amounts to a personal sacrifice, the deliberate postponement...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

The high cost of housing in California is prompting nearly a quarter of the Golden State's residents to seriously consider moving to cheaper digs elsewhere. What's more, when Californians buy a second home, more and more of them are buying out of state in cheaper housing markets. California has the nation's third fastest rate of home price appreciation this year, behind Nevada and Hawaii, rising more than 18 percent compared to last year, 84 percent in the past five years and a whopping 338 percent since 1980, according to the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight's Home Price Index. Nationwide...

Candidate founded group to shift children's 'thinking, values, action' Presidential candidate John Kerry and his wife, Teresa, organized a group 11 years ago with an agenda to use public schools at all levels to "leverage change" throughout U.S. society by instigating "a complete shift in thinking, values and action" among America's youth. Second Nature, run by Anthony Cortese, an adviser to Kerry who has campaigned for him this year, promotes the notion of "Education for Sustainability" in schools across the country – from kindergarten through the universities. Cortese, president of the organization that is financed principally by Teresa Heinz Kerry's...