Free Republic

A note regarding annual distributions: the Hussman Funds generally pay required annual capital gains distributions during the month of November. As in prior years, our policy is not to announce the exact date of these distributions. For 2009, no capital gain distribution is required for the Strategic Growth Fund. The distribution for the Strategic Total Return Fund is expected to be approximately 0.165 per share (1.35% of the prevailing net asset value), primarily characterized as short-term capital gains. --- Let's begin with a news item from last week. “RealtyTrac today released its Q3 2009 Metropolitan Foreclosure Market Report, which shows...

The Richmond Fed produced a report that provides some useful information on the issue of non-recourse mortgage loans and their default rates. The report includes a State-by-State breakdown of the rules for defaulting. This report was over my head. For example, the following calculation describes the probability of a short sale in a Recourse State: The conclusions are easier to read. I found this interesting: “For homes appraised at $300,000 to $500,000, borrowers in non-recourse states are 59% more likely to default than borrowers in recourse states. For homes appraised at $500,000 to $750,000, borrowers in non-recourse states are almost...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zayow4PaQr4 This is an account of over 5 years of research and collection of evidence that many of North Carolina's elected county officials have assumed office illegally, and are acting in a CRIMINAL capacity, according to statute, but the Attorney General, having acknowledged the problem, refuses to do anything about it. See for your self. Absent assumption of liability, absent assurance of value, absent offer of recourse. The viewer must decide. FOR A PDF VERSION: www.amossigngraphics.com/movie/abovelaw.pdf

High Foreclosure Rates Spread into New Metro Areas Published: Wednesday, 28 Oct 2009 | 1:23 AM ET By: Joseph Pisani CNBC News Associate It comes as no surprise that metro areas like Las Vegas, Nev. and Fort Myers, Fla. had the highest foreclosure rates in the country—they've been high for some time. Foreclosed Home But high foreclosure rates are now moving into metro areas that previously avoided the problem, according to a new report from RealtyTrac, an online foreclosure marketplace. “Rising unemployment and a new variety of mortgage resets continued to gradually shift the nation’s foreclosure epicenters in the third...

Some struggling homeowners are turning to the courts in a bid to force mortgage servicers to consider them for the Obama administration's foreclosure-rescue program, arguing they are eligible for help but haven't received it. The suits are the latest sign of difficulties some borrowers are having with the program, which has helped more than 500,000 people begin trial loan modifications since it was announced in February.

Frank wants to use bailout money to stop foreclosuresBY JIM HAND SUN CHRONICLE STAFF Wednesday, October 14, 2009 2:09 AM EDT U.S. Rep. Barney Frank will push to redirect some repaid bank bailout money toward unemployed workers in danger of losing their homes. Frank, D-Newton, is sponsoring legislation that would make low-interest loans available to the unemployed so they can make their mortgage payments and prevent foreclosure. His bill envisions using $2 billion that bank have repaid the government from bailouts they received under the Troubled Assets Relief Program. Frank said the federal help would not go to people who...

DETROIT (WXYZ) - The Detroit City Council's front-running candidate is about to be homeless. Pugh's campaign manager says he is still able to represent the people of Detroit because he knows what they're going through.

The first night after she surrendered her house to foreclosure, Sheri West endured the darkness in her Hyundai sedan. She parked in her old driveway, with her flower-print dresses and hats piled in boxes on the back seat, and three cherished houseplants on the floor. She used her backyard as a restroom. The second night, she stayed with a friend, and so it continued for more than a year: Ms. West — mother of three grown children, grandmother to six and great-grandmother to one — passed months on the couches of friends and relatives, and in the front seat of...

There were over 900,000 foreclosures in the third quarter as Foreclosures rise 5 percent from summer to fall. The number of households caught up in the foreclosure crisis rose more than 5 percent from summer to fall as a federal effort to assist struggling borrowers was overwhelmed by a flood of defaults among people who lost their jobs. The foreclosure crisis affected nearly 938,000 properties in the July-September quarter, compared with about 890,000 in the prior three months, according to a report released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc. That puts foreclosure-related filings on a pace to hit about 3.5 million this...

Troubled homeowners may be losing a major lifeline: so-called short sales. To get bad loans off their books and spur home sales, lenders have been forgiving the difference between the outstanding mortgage balance and the purchase price. Banks were never eager participants in short sales, and now financial firms—even those that can offload losses to the government—are balking at such transactions. Some lenders are forcing the sellers to pay extra money at closing. Others want a promissory note for part of the amount due. The situation could be a setback for the already wobbly housing recovery. A record one-third of...

We are not exactly sure what is going on with the producers over at NBC News and the TODAY Show, but the quality of people they are digging up for their news and interview segments has certainly been lacking. Yesterday, The TODAY Show featured a segment detailing the latest “trend”: people in foreclosed homes are stripping them bare and selling the contents before turning the property over to the banks, going so far as even selling the toilets for $20. In this video clip, NBC Reporter Kerry Sanders is talking with Zorene Brodek (sp?) who justifies her actions: Sanders: What...

President Obama Speaks - And Lies (Again) President Obama stood in New York at "high noon" and talked about how we must have "change", and that we have "helped homeowners avoid foreclosures", how "we must put in place reforms" and that "we have helped come back from the brink" and "an irresponsible period of crisis." In fact, in his speech he said: So I want to urge you to demonstrate that you take this obligation to heart. To put greater effort into helping families who need their mortgages modified under my administration's homeownership plan. To help small business owners who...

A south Minneapolis woman who had refused to leave her foreclosed home after being evicted last month has been removed from the house again. More than 40 supporters of Rosemary Williams on Friday afternoon lined the yellow tape that police used to cordon off the property, chanting and yelling as workers boarded up the house with metal sheeting and friends helped Williams carry out boxes of personal items. "It's not over yet," Williams told the crowd when she emerged from the house, smiling through tears as she held high a bouquet of flowers. The largely peaceful rally briefly turned physical...

A recovery in U.S. markets may depend on how China converts its huge inventory of U.S. Treasuries into equity. A rebound is a dangerously shaky assumption if you look beyond those green shoots and see that our nation may be in the throes of a rolling bankruptcy with no one left to bail us out. Investors distracted by talk of recovery may find that instead of the giant beanstalk of fairytale fame that allowed Jack to climb into the clouds and steal the giant's gold, they'll have ended up grasping at straws. We're in a fix, and the world is...

You know times are tough when people are getting kicked out of their house when it’s not even for sale. That’s what happened to Anna Ramirez after she found all of her stuff out on the front lawn of her Homestead home last week and a strange man demanding she get out of his newly purchased house. The eviction came after Ramirez’s home was mistakenly auctioned off to the highest bidder by her bank, Washington Mutual. Usually, you get a warning before you get the boot. A foreclosure letter. Maybe a sign saying your house is up for sale. Not...

The country's growing unemployment is overtaking subprime mortgages as the main driver of foreclosures, according to bankers and economists, threatening to send even higher the number of borrowers who will lose their homes and making the foreclosure crisis far more complicated to unwind. Economists estimate that 1.8 million borrowers will lose their homes this year, up from 1.4 million last year, according to Moody's Economy.com. And the government, which has already committed billions of dollars to foreclosure-prevention efforts, has found it far more difficult to help people who have lost their paychecks than those whose mortgage payments became unaffordable because...

With no family or job to support her, Myrna Blanc has one week to find a solution to her foreclosure situation or she could be out on the streets. Blanc is disabled from a car crash 12 years ago. She struggles to get around her house. Soon, it won't be her home. Deputies delivered an eviction notice. Her home is in foreclosure. Crying, Myrna says, "Here, I'm completely broke. I'm really caught between a rock and a hard place and I've got nowhere to go." Myrna fell for the same variable rate mortgage that thousands of others in the Desert...

The number of U.S. households on the verge of losing their homes rose 7 percent from June to July, as the escalating foreclosure crisis continued to outpace government efforts to limit the damage. Foreclosure filings were up 32 percent from the same month last year, RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. More than 360,000 households, or one in every 355 homes, received a foreclosure-related notice, such as a notice of default or trustee's sale. That's the highest monthly level since the foreclosure-listing firm began publishing the data more than four years ago. Banks repossessed more than 87,000 homes in July, up...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- You've heard of speed dating? It's got nothin' on foreclosure buying these days. In many places, anyone who wants to buy a foreclosure better act fast, or they're going to come away with bupkus. REOs, the industry term for homes repossessed by lenders and put back on the market, are often selling in a day -- sometimes in less. "We're seeing REOs go very quickly. Offers come in immediately after the listing comes on the market, within 24 hours," said Brad Geisen, founder of Foreclosure.com. Some homes have been put into contract in less than 90...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, scrambling to get its main housing initiative on track, extracted a pledge from 25 mortgage company executives to improve their efforts to assist borrowers in danger of foreclosure. In an all-day series of meetings Tuesday at the Treasury Department, government officials reached a verbal agreement with the executives for a new goal of about 500,000 loan modifications by Nov. 1 and stressed the program's urgency. The sessions came amid concerns that the Obama administration will fall far short of its original goal of helping up to 3 million to 4 million troubled borrowers with modified...

State regulators are pressing their case against four South Florida foreclosure rescue companies this week, as federal regulators crack down on an industry they say is taking millions from desperate homeowners but doing little or nothing for them. A Palm Beach Circuit Court judge granted the Florida Attorney General's Office an emergency ruling Friday, requiring four mortgage modification operations to cease doing business: FHA All Day.Com, Safety Financial Services, Housing Assistance Law Center and Housing Assistance Now. Investigators last week went to a Deerfield Beach storefront that once was the address for at least two of the businesses and found...

VIVA, housing?! If you look at the numbers now coming out of Washington, you might want to go with the exclamation point at the end of my first sentence. Housing lives! -- although the industry's faint pulse is being helped by relatively low mortgage rates (which aren't nearly as low as they once were) and government subsidies (which can't continue forever). Just yesterday, for instance, the Commerce Department reported that new-home sales grew at an annualized rate of 11 percent last month, which was much better than people were expecting. And if you look under the covers, the annualized rate...

Renetta Atterberry thought she had lost her East 102nd Street house. So she was shocked to learn in January -- five years after her mortgage company filed for foreclosure -- that it was still in her name. Worse, the long-vacant rental home had been vandalized and she faced a raft of housing code violations. Since then, she has been saddled with debts of about $12,000 to pay for demolition and back taxes. "I thought I had nothing else to do with that home," said Atterberry. "I was so embarrassed and humiliated by this." Her mortgage company didn't buy the house...

Five months after the Obama administration unveiled a sweeping initiative designed to reach 9 million struggling homeowners, home foreclosures continue to rise at an alarming rate. Foreclosure filings were reported on more than 1.5 million properties in the first six months of the year, a 15 percent increase over the same period of last year, according to RealtyTrac. All told, 1 in 84 American homes--or 1.19 percent--received a foreclosure filing during the period. "We talk about green shoots or about things getting worse at a slower rate, but this is one thing that is getting worse month by month," says...

Let's make some stipulations. President Obama didn't create the foreclosure nightmare. Instead, he walked in while it was unfolding. That said, it will be his nightmare because among the first things he did was create loan modification program that he, himself, said would save nearly ten million people from foreclosure. The president held a press conference, and he said it would cost about $75 billion. As soon as he did all of this, he took ownership for the rising foreclosure crisis. The opinions of what to do about rising foreclosures are plentiful. For instance, those like me would say that...

TEANECK, N.J. — A New Jersey woman is hoping her bake sale will help forestall foreclosure and keep a roof over her head. Angela Logan has until July 26 to raise $2,559.54 due her lender under a federal program to help homeowners in financial trouble.

In an almost-predictable move, the Obama administration has begun to mull the possibility of buying up homes nearing foreclosure and then renting the homes back to their current occupants. In a Reuters story on Tuesday, U.S. government officials were said to be considering the rental option, thereby reducing the number of foreclosures. Of course, such a move would also increase the property holdings of the federal government. Another possibility reportedly being discussed by Obama officials is to offer extra money--in addition to normal unemployment benefits--to those struggling with their mortgages. The administration didn't comment on whether it would be willing...

NEW YORK, July 14 (Reuters) - U.S. government officials are weighing a plan that would let borrowers who have fallen behind on their mortgage payments avoid eviction by renting their homes instead, sources familiar with the administration's thinking said on Tuesday. Under one idea being discussed, delinquent homeowners would surrender ownership of their homes but would continue to live in the property for several years, the sources told Reuters. Officials are also considering whether the government should make mortgage payments on behalf of borrowers who cannot keep up with their home loans, tapping an unused portion of a $50 billion...

Hotel foreclosures spread throughout California Andrew S. Ross Sunday, July 12, 2009 The "challenges" for San Francisco's biggest business are coming thick and fast. That oft-used word at last Tuesday's San Francisco Visitors & Convention Bureau luncheon rang loud and clear two days later when the Four Seasons Hotel on Market Street defaulted on a $90 million loan. Those who might have forgotten were reminded that Nob Hill's famed Stanford Court Hotel had gone into receivership two weeks earlier, owing $89 million after its new owners bought the place for $93 million two years ago and spent $32 million in...

There's no doubt about it... as the St. Pete Times PolitiFact says, Obama's promise to create a foreclosure prevention fund to the tune of $75 billion minimal, with the Making Homes Affordable Program is in the "promises kept" column. What the PolitiFact tracking system doesn't discuss if it spending the taxpayers money has any any effect on the foreclosure trend. And the fact it, reality dictates it not only hasn't prevented... or even slowed... foreclosures, but they've been on the rise since the O'Inaugural festivities.... despite still relatively low interest rates. Well... congratulations, Obama. You kept your promise, put us...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is gearing up to handle a large number of bank failures expected as a result of bad mortgages, both in residential and commercial real estate, an economist said Tuesday. “They know they’re going to take down a large number of banks and they can’t do it until they’re staffed up,” said Mark Dotzour, chief economist and director of research for the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University. Dotzour expects federal regulators to establish an agency, similar to the Resolution Trust Corp. that disposed of assets belonging to insolvent S&Ls in the late 1980s...

Zero money down, not subprime loans, led to the mortgage meltdown. What is really behind the mushrooming rate of mortgage foreclosures since 2007? The evidence from a huge national database containing millions of individual loans strongly suggests that the single most important factor is whether the homeowner has negative equity in a house -- that is, the balance of the mortgage is greater than the value of the house. This means that most government policies being discussed to remedy woes in the housing market are misdirected. Many policy makers and ordinary people blame the rise of foreclosures squarely on subprime...

When her Edmonds condo went on the market, Mindy Moore thought she had managed to avoid foreclosure. Moore listed the home in Edmonds for about $30,000 less than she owed on the mortgage. She thought the “short sale” agreement signed with the bank meant the bank would absorb the loss. Then she discovered that her lender, Bank of America, might still come after her for the difference. That means she may have to let the bank take back her property, or file for bankruptcy because she can’t afford to pay up. Experts say the wording, which was recently and quietly...

A growing number of American homeowners are falling into financial limbo: They're badly behind on payments, but their banks have not yet foreclosed. The backlog of seriously delinquent mortgages, which so far affects about 1 million borrowers, is a shadow over hopes for a rebound in the nation's housing markets. It masks the full extent of the foreclosure crisis and threatens to depress prices even further just as some parts of the country are hinting at recovery. For lenders, it could portend even more financial losses tied to the mortgage meltdown. "It just means foreclosure rates are going to keep...

The brief moment of hope that housing had hit a bottom and that both the rate of home sales and prices would improve is slipping away. The pressures that will push prices down, by another 20% in some markets, are rising interest rates and an unemployment rate that will almost certainly go over 10% and stay there for several quarters. The new Reuters/University of Michigan survey reports that the value of homes when adjusted for inflation will drop for at least another half a decade based on current conditions. The survey also raises the concern that consumer spending cannot resume...

We've discussed supply and demand, price-to-income and price-to-rent ratios, and real house prices, in trying to forecast how long house prices will continue to decline. This is a comparison of real house prices and the unemployment rate. Note: House prices are national from Case-Shiller (back to 1987) and Freddie Mac's Purchase index (back to 1970). The Case-Shiller index was set equal to the Freddie Mac index in Q1 1987, and then both indexes adjusted by CPI less shelter. Click on image for larger graph in new window. The two previous national housing bubbles (late 1970s and late 1980s) are shown...

To understand the housing market, look at the one area where government hasn't intervened. If you have a magnifying glass you might find some signs of a housing recovery here or there, sometime in the near future. Defying all the green shoots, however, is the upper end, jumbo market, which continues to be absolutely miserable. Yesterday

<p>Will the coming wave of OptionARM mortgage resets look like the wave of subprime defaults?</p>

U.S. foreclosure activity for May ebbed from April's record, but mortgages still failed at a staggering pace as President Barack Obama's rescue programs... Foreclosure filings dipped 6 percent in the month but increased 18 percent from May 2008, marking the third highest month on record. "There were almost one million foreclosure filings in a three-month period, and that's simply unprecedented," Rick Sharga, senior vice president at RealtyTrac in Irvine, California, said in an interview. Temporary freezes on foreclosure activity ended in March. Failures of many seriously delinquent loans that were put on hold during those moratoria have been thrust back...

Foreclosure rates slowed in May; now the market can slug out its interpretation. Will investors pay attention to these better numbers, or rue the looming outlook? In May, foreclosure rates fell 6%, according to RealtyTrac, with more than 321,000 households receiving at least one foreclosure-related notice last month. But it was still 18% higher from the same time last year and the third straight month with more than 300,000 households receiving a foreclosure filing. In a normal economy filings generally fall around 100,000 a month. And this slowdown in foreclosures might not last for long. The mortgage industry has only...

The optimist’s view of the May foreclosure data from RealtyTrac is that the rate dropped 6% from April. The realist’s view is likely to focus on the 18% increase from May 2008. Neither view can ignore the fact that foreclosure filings hit more than 321,ooo homes last month. The sunny side of the foreclosure numbers is that if the trend continues to get better, housing prices will start to recover and the real estate crisis will be over. The improving pace at which homes are being sold in some hard hit areas of the most troubled states like Nevada and...

Yet another bullet to fire at the housing problem. Read » The government continues its desperate effort to make the cost of dwelling more expensive. There's already an $8,000 homebuyer tax credit, but it's obviously not done enough, so Senators Johnny Isaacson and Christopher Dodd are proposing to up it to $15,000. And, perhaps more importantly, they're eliminating the income requirements. Under the previous tax credit, a couple had to have a combined income of less than $150,000. Now any upper-middle class homebuyer is eligible, and hopefully this will get the McMansion sales going again. If you think about it,...

Which way is the trend going? Various state moratoria make it tough to figure out. RealtyTrac is out with fresh foreclosure data for May, and it shows foreclosures topping 300,000 for the third straight month. At 321,480, the number is actually down a tad from March and April, but it's still up 18% from a year ago, and even the sequential downturn may not mean anything, since March and April likely saw big boosts from the pent up foreclosure moratorium over the new year. And, we may still not be getting a realistic picture of underlying housing economics, says RealtyTrac:...

The next group of Americans to lose their homes seemed to have good credit and affordable loans. But those families have been walloped by the recession. There's a simple reason you shouldn't get too excited about the "green shoots" of an economic turnaround. In the housing market, a lot of prime mortgages are becoming subprime as a new wave of foreclosures begins to hit. Mainstream homeowners -- those previously "safe" borrowers with sound credit who have conservative, fixed-rate mortgages -- are getting into trouble at an alarming rate. In the first quarter, the percentage of these borrowers who were behind...

As if joblessness and the down stock market weren't enough, the weak economy has led to another problem: mosquitoes. A growing collection of vacant homes in foreclosure, coupled with a wet spring, has fueled a mosquito resurgence in the region, Dallas County health officials say. Empty homes with unkempt swimming pools have been especially to blame. "We're getting a lot of calls on vacant homes that are foreclosed on and have swimming pools that, basically, are breeding grounds for mosquitoes," said Zachary Thompson, director of Dallas County health and human services. [Snip] The predicament has stoked concerns that North Texas...

Right now there are more houses in some stage of foreclosure than there are current listings of properties for sale. The lifting of foreclosure moratoria is causing a spike in default notices. The second wave is building. The owner of today’s featured property recently cut the price $100,000 in an effort to move it before the wave hits. Today, we take a look at the available data and show this wave in its formative stage. Foreclosure is a four step process: (1) the borrower quits making payments, (2) the lender issues of Notice of Default, (3) the lender issues a...

The boom-and-bust cycle in the U.S. housing market over the past decade and a half has generated greater gains and larger losses for minority groups than it has for whites, according to an analysis of housing, economic and demographic data by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. From 1995 through the middle of this decade, homeownership rates rose more rapidly among all minorities than among whites. But since the start of the housing bust in 2005, rates have fallen more steeply for two of the nation’s largest minority groups—blacks and native-born Latinos—than for the rest...

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina's highest court on Tuesday temporarily stopped thousands of pending foreclosure sales in the state to give homeowners more time to take advantage of a new federal program to help them refinance mortgages. The injunction — which mortgage experts said appeared to be the nation's first court-ordered stop for an entire state — prevents judges in South Carolina from finalizing foreclosure sales on properties guaranteed by Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae or any other mortgage company that has signed on to a federal assistance program. RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listing firm, says the ruling could affect...

Next door to Jeffrey Cash's tidy East Oakland bungalow sits a boarded-up foreclosed house that has been vacant for months, attracting locals who shoot dice in the driveway, smoke crack on the porch and dump debris in the yard, he said. "I call the cops on a regular basis, but it is an ongoing battle," he said. "It's a part-time job making sure it doesn't become more of an eyesore than it already is." Last week, someone hurled a brick through Cash's front window - he thinks in retaliation for his frequent contacts with the police. His situation is emblematic...

The Obama administration unveiled an expansion of its $75 billion foreclosure prevention plan yesterday, providing new subsidies to mortgage lenders and investors. Under the expanded plan, some homeowners could see their payments fall significantly and the interest rate on their second mortgage pushed down to 1 percent. The announcement comes nearly two months after the administration launched the housing program, called Making Home Affordable. While officials said some borrowers have already received help, the foreclosure rate is rising and it could be months before the program begins to have an impact. The new efforts address, in part, criticisms from consumer...