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WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes dipped slightly in September to remain in very low territory, according to an index released Monday. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index fell by a point to 14, on a seasonally adjusted index where readings above 50 are considered good. The index, which correlates closely with single-family housing starts, has held between 13 and 16 for the last six months.

Pending sales of existing U.S. homes fell in July from June in the latest sign of weakness in the housing industry, data from a real estate trade group showed on Monday. The National Association of Realtors Pending Home Sales Index, based on contracts signed in July, was down 1.3 percent to 89.7 from 90.9 in June. Economists polled by Reuters ahead of the report were expecting pending home sales to fall 1.3 percent. In a sign of how much the sector has recovered from a year ago, the index was up 14.4 percent from July of 2010.

Recent falls in the stock market and growing concerns over the cloud hanging over the U.S. economy has prompted more home buyers to cancel real estate deals or continue to sit on the sidelines, analysts say. The National Association of REALTORS® said in a recent report that home buyer cancellations in the last two months increased about 10 percent from a year earlier. Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, says the increase is due to low appraisals that do not match the mortgage amount, “overly stringent” lending standards, as well as waning buyer confidence. “The typical home buyer gets rattled when...

The Washington Post is reporting that President Obama has assigned his staff with the task of designing a new set of government guarantees behind the U.S. mortgage market. Although as the Post also reports the “approach could even preserve Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.” That’s correct. Despite their role in driving the housing bubble and the already $160 billion in taxpayer losses, President Obama appears to be considering just putting the same failed system in place. Of course, we’ll be promised that it will all work better this time. Perhaps most offensive is that the Post reports that Obama “officials...

The housing boom in Australia is now an escalating bust. Many Australian homeowners put every cent they had into their homes and they needed double incomes to just scrape by. Unfortunately, those jobs are disappearing in a construction and commercial real estate bust.  I warned about this event for years, but in Australia, like everywhere else "It's Different Here" until it's not.  60 Minutes Australia picked up the Secretly Broke story in "The Big Squeeze". Click on link for a 60 Minutes video. Here is a partial transcript.ALLISON LANGDON: To the world, Tracy and David Dodd are the very model of Australia’s...

If someone you knew claimed to have bought a new house for $16, you'd probably expect it to be a rundown hovel. But for Kenneth Robinson, that princely sum could see him as the new owner of a $300,000 home in an well-manicured part of Flower Mound, Texas. On June 17, Mr Robinson took advantage of a little known Texas law to move into the abandoned home. The house had been in foreclosure for more than a year and its owner walked away. Then, the mortgage company went bust. After months of research, Mr Robinson used the obscure law 'adverse...

Housing prices are due to slide another 20 percent nationwide and will throw the U.S. economy into a fresh recession probably sometime next year, says economist Gary Shilling. "The problem is there are too many excess inventories. We estimate that there are 2 (million) to 2.5 million excess housing unit inventories over and above the normal working levels," Shilling tells Yahoo's Daily Ticker. The United States normally builds about 1.5 million houses a year, so with such excess inventory lagging on the market, it's going to take around four to five years for normalcy to return. "Excess inventories are the...

Sales of existing homes fell in May, as severe weather and high gas prices weighed on the shaky housing market. Home sales fell 3.8% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.81 million, down from a revised rate of 5 million in April, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday. Sales were more than 15% lower than in May 2010. Economists had expected a May sales rate of 4.79 million existing homes, according to consensus estimates from Briefing.com. "Spiking gasoline prices along with widespread severe weather hurt house shopping in April, leading to soft figures for actual closings in May,"...

~ By: Larry Walker, Jr. ~ My previous advice proffered the simple concept of a Mortgage in-Kind Exchange. If you didn’t like that notion, perhaps you will like this one. An Adjustable Principal Mortgage is a solution that would allow a mortgage company to temporarily write down the principal amount of a mortgage to an amount comparable to the contracts original debt ratio, and subsequently make adjustments every third year as home prices fluctuate. Once the value of the home equals or exceeds its original cost, no further adjustments are required. Neither the length of the loan or its...

By: Larry Walker, Jr.The first step in any recovery is acknowledging the problem. The second step is having faith that a power greater than oneself can restore sanity. Joe purchased his home four years ago for $300,000. He currently has an outstanding mortgage balance of $270,000. The appraised value of his home has fallen to $150,000. If he sells it for $150,000 today, he will eat a loss of $150,000 which is not deductible for tax purposes. Joe can afford his mortgage payments and has not missed any. Since he doesn’t qualify for a loan modification, what options does he have?For...

MODERATOR, I OPENED THIS UNDER CHIT CHAT AND WANT MY TITLE, THIS IS NOT A NEWS STORY POSTING Charles and Jill Segal have not made a mortgage payment in nearly five years -- but they continue to live in their five-bedroom West Palm Beach, Fla. home. Lynn, from St. Petersburg, Fla., has been living without paying for three years. In Thousand Oaks, Calif., an actor has missed 30 payments, and still, he has not lost his home. They're not alone. Some 4.2 million mortgage borrowers are either seriously delinquent or have had their cases referred to lawyers to pursue foreclosure...

The subprime crisis has spread well beyond the victims of those loans. The residue of the crisis spread to the economy and began to affect those who had lost their jobs, their equity and finally their homes. All of us have been touched by friends and loved ones who had to leave their homes. The subprime crisis was caused primarily by the crash of real estate values and not by risky loans. Since then, several variables have contributed to the rise of record foreclosures. Loan modifications were widely marketed as easy solutions to homeowners facing payment default. As most discovered,...

Two unrelated news stories on the same day show the contrast between government decisions and private decisions. Under the headline, “Foreclosed Homes Sell at Big Discounts,” USA Today reported that banks were selling the homes that they foreclosed on at discounts of 38 percent in Tennessee to 41 percent in Illinois and Ohio. Banks in general try to get rid of the homes that they acquire by foreclosure by selling them quickly for whatever they can get. Why? Because banks are forced by economic realities to realize that they are not real-estate companies. No matter how much expertise bank officials...

southern Florida couple got sweet revenge when they foreclosed on Bank of America, instead of the other way around. The unusual turn of events started in Collier County months ago, when the mega-bank notified Maurenn Nyergers and her husband that their comfortable, relatively new home had gone into foreclosure. Trouble is, the Nyergers say they they never owed the bank a cent, swearing instead that they had paid cash for their dwelling. A Collier County judge agreed with the couple, and ordered Bank of America to pay their legal expenses. But then, the Nyergers say they waited more than five...

The rise and fall of the housing market was one of the more spectacular bubbles of recent memory. And the bursting of that bubble is still having a profound impact on the economy, even though we're now several years past the peak. Yet, it doesn't look like housing prices will be bouncing back anytime soon. Last week, I examined the perfect storm of factors that led to the incredible inflation of housing prices and some of the reasons housing prices have fallen back to earth. Although I do believe that prices have stabilized, there are many headwinds that will make...

A bank foreclosure story you've got to see to believe. A Collier County couple turns the tables on Bank of America, the bank that tried to foreclose on their home. Now, the family is foreclosing on the bank! Even bringing trucks and deputies ready to seize property. The foreclosure nightmare started when Warren and Maureen Nyerges paid cash for a home owned by Bank of American in the Golden Gate Estates. They never had a mortgage whatsoever. But, the bank fouled it up and wound up issuing a foreclosure through their attorney.

Reporting from North Las Vegas, Nev.— Charles Mills can barely afford to stay here. But he also can't afford to move. That's why the 44-year-old heavy-equipment operator was preparing to leave his wife and young daughter here and go where he could find work — the Oklahoma oil fields. Mills has a mortgage to pay, even if its size pains him. He purchased his house in 2006 for $308,500. Current value: $105,797. "We talked about it: What can we do with the house?" Mills said. "Nobody's going to buy it. Nobody's going to rent it. If we walk away, my...

Sales of previously owned U.S. homes fell in April, a trade group said on Thursday, in a sign that the country's housing market is struggling to recover from the recent financial crisis. Economists polled by Reuters ahead of the report were expecting home resales to rise to 5.2 million from the previously reported 5.1 million. "The recovery is very sluggish," said the group's senior economist, Lawrence Yun, adding that unnecessarily tight credit is continuing to restrain the market. About 37 percent of the market consisted of distressed sales, which include both foreclosures and sales of homes where the bank agrees...

Groves requested relief under the Declaratory Judgment Act, as well as “other and further relief to which [she] may be justly entitled.” The trial court’s judgment does not indicate that it granted her request to “quiet title” exclusively under the Declaratory Judgment Act. Accordingly, no error appears on the face of this record. See Tex. R. App. P. 26.1(c), 30; Alexander, 134 S.W.3d at 848. We overrule MERS’s first issue. ..... Groves alleged in her petition that MERS’s deed of trust “purported to create a lien for security purposes on Plaintiff’s property as described.” This alleged lien constitutes an adverse...

On March 30, an Alabama judge issued a short, conclusory order that stopped foreclosure on the home of a beleaguered family, and also prevents the same bank in the case from trying to foreclose against that couple, ever again. This may not seem like big news -- but upon review of the underlying documents, the extraordinarily important nature of the decision and the case becomes obvious. No Securitization, No Foreclosure The couple involved, the Horaces, took out a predatory mortgage with Encore Credit Corp in November, 2005. Apparently Encore sold their loan to EMC Mortgage Corp, who then tried to...