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WASHINGTON (AP) -- A record 9 percent of American homeowners with a mortgage were either behind on their payments or in foreclosure at the end of June, as damage from the housing crisis continues to mount, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Friday. But the source of trouble in the mortgage market has shifted from subprime loans made to borrowers with poor credit to homeowners who had solid credit but took out exotic loans with ballooning monthly payments. ... But for the first time since the mortgage crisis started, delinquencies on subprime adjustable-rate loans declined. While more than one out of...

<p>Email I recieved moments ago from one of our clients....</p> <p>I regret to tell all of you, my valued clients, business partners and friends that GMAC Mortgage has chosen to exit the retail side of business all together as of today. They have closed all retail branches including my Spokane branch and will set up a call center mentality somewhere on the East Coast which has eliminated over 5,000 jobs.</p>

ARIZONA DAILY STAR A Northwest Side homeowners association discovered its old community-management company was quietly making money off the area's home sales during the housing boom without the HOA board's knowledge. Now, after hammering out a contract with a new management company, the board wants other associations to look at their own contracts so they know who is paid when homes are sold in their communities. At issue is a fee collected — from the buyer or the seller — to cover the cost of the state-mandated transfer of homeowners association documents to a home's new owner. In other words,...

Tel Aviv Rental Apartments Become Real Estate Gold By Carole Fradette Israel News Agency Jerusalem, Israel --- August 22 … With the peace process moving forward in the Middle East, a drop in terror attacks and a record breaking season for tourists visiting Israel, rental apartments in Tel Aviv have quickly turned into a much prized asset. Hard evidence that the Tel Aviv apartment rental and sales sector is rapidly expanding is illustrated by the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) which has also risen recently, and of all sectors real estate has taken the largest and most consistent jump. Investors...

Shorter commutes. Less sprawl. Cleaner air. Denser housing closer to downtown near transportation hubs. "Smart growth" it's called. California policy makers have been yakking about this -- dreaming about it -- for decades. But too many interests have been prospering from dumb growth or have merely been skittish of a future they can't quite visualize. Enter a tenacious policy wonk with roots in local government: state Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento). He has just managed to finesse to the verge of legislative passage a visionary smart growth bill that, by its nature, also fights global warming. ... (snip) The measure (SB...

The statement above means: once people learn how to make money in residential real estate, there is no going back. Many people believe that real estate as an investment is dead, buried and never to be seen again, but I sincerely believe they are wrong. As I write this, there is a new class of millionaires-in-training who are preparing to get wealthy in real estate. They are buying all the foreclosures, in good areas, they can find. About 3% of the population is busy in this enterprise and about 30%, 10 times more, are people who will tell anyone who...

The government keeps trying to crack down on down-payment assistance programs. But Christopher Russell is one step ahead of the law After celebrating their first anniversary in May, Jeffrey and Tina Giurato were eager to move out of their apartment and into a house. They found an eight-year-old, $198,000 duplex with three bedrooms in Lake in the Hills, Ill. But the couple, insurance agents, needed to buy furniture and would be shy of cash. Their loan officer told them an Indian tribe in central Maine would pony up the $5,940 they needed for the down payment. After the sale closed,...

Problems selling your house? Take a page from Donald Trump. Sell it to the Russians. Trump has hired a Russian-speaking broker to market some of his properties to Russian oligarchs. Oh, and to further follow Trump's lead you need to raise the price. A duplex penthouse at Trump Park Avenue has been on sale since 2005 for $32 million, since he had no takers at $32 million, he just raised the price to $51 million. Trump recently sold his Palm Beach estate Maison de L'Amitie to a Russian fertilizer baron for a reported $100 million...

Lehman Brothers, the Wall Street investment bank, is understood to be in talks to sell its entire $40 billion (£21.5 billion) real estate portfolio in a move to stem losses incurred during one of the worst property slumps since the Great Depression. The bank – whose stock has fallen 69 per cent since the credit crisis erupted just over a year ago – is believed to be prepared to take a $5 billion hit on the sale of the assets and securities. Lehman is believed to have begun sale negotiations with firms such as Blackstone, the private equity group, and...

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif.—Donald Trump will soon be Ed McMahon's landlord. Trump announced Thursday he would save the television personality's Beverly Hills mansion from foreclosure by buying it for an undisclosed amount and leasing it to McMahon. The developer told the Los Angeles Times he doesn't know McMahon personally, but acted out of compassion because helping out "would be an honor." McMahon, 85, who was Johnny Carson's sidekick on the "Tonight" show for three decades, has not worked for about 18 months because of a neck injury. He defaulted on $4.8 million in mortgage loans with Countrywide Financial Corp.

TVA has approved a water-access deal for a development group whose investors include U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., who sits on a committee that exercises oversight of the federal utility.

Not long ago, [home equity] loans, which used to be known as second mortgages, were considered the borrowing of last resort, to be avoided by all but people in dire financial straits. Today, these loans have become universally accepted, their image transformed by ubiquitous ad campaigns from banks. Since the early 1980s, the value of home equity loans outstanding has ballooned to more than $1 trillion from $1 billion, and nearly a quarter of Americans with first mortgages have them. That explosive growth has been a boon for banks. Banks’ returns on fixed-rate home equity loans and lines of credit,...

When Shaun Yandell proposed to his longtime girlfriend Gina Marasco on the doorstep of their new home in the sunny suburb of Elk Grove, California, four years ago, he never imagined things would get this bad. But they did, and it happened almost overnight. "It is going to be heartbreak," Yandell told CNN. "But we are hanging on." Yandell's marriage isn't falling apart: his neighborhood is. Devastated by the subprime mortgage crisis, hundreds of homes have been foreclosed and thousands of residents have been forced to move, leaving in their wake a not-so-pleasant path of empty houses, unkempt lawns, vacant...

WASHINGTON -- Alan Greenspan usually surrounds his opinions with caveats and convoluted clauses. But ask his view of the government's response to problems confronting mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and he offers one word: "Bad." In a conversation this week, the former Federal Reserve chairman also said he expects that U.S. house prices, a key factor in the outlook for the economy and financial markets, will begin to stabilize in the first half of next year. "Home prices in the U.S. are likely to start to stabilize or touch bottom sometime in the first half of 2009," he...

U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., on panel that oversees federal agency - TVA has approved a water-access deal for a development group whose investors include U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, D-N.C., who sits on a committee that exercises oversight of the federal utility. On June 3, TVA CEO Tom Kilgore approved a transaction that provides 145 feet of water-access rights along the shoreline of Watts Bar Reservoir in Roane County to an entity called The Cove at Blackberry Ridge LLC. In exchange, The Cove agreed to relinquish 150 feet of water-access rights in Rhea County and also provide approximately $15,000 for...

In what might be considered a new low for the housing market, a home in Detroit sold for $1. The home, located at 8111 Traverse Street, close to the Detroit City Airport, was foreclosed upon last summer, after it was purchased for $65,000 in 2006, according to an article in The Detroit News. The bank was so eager to sell the foreclosed property, it lowered the price to $1 in a final attempt to find a buyer. According to the newspaper, 14 days after the property was listed for $1, a local woman purchased the house as “an investment property."...

Joann Gardner sat forlornly on her living room floor, waiting for the final step in her home's foreclosure process. The lender's representative was due any moment to give her "cash for keys," a transaction in which she would deliver her family home vacant in exchange for an incentive payment. "I'm glad it's done," Gardner said wearily. "I just want to sit down and have some Hennessy." Only days earlier, the house had been jammed with boxes and bags holding the worldly goods her family had accumulated during 54 years in the cramped Oakland bungalow. Now it was entirely empty, the...

WESLEY CHAPEL, FLA. -- The first in an occasional series. -- Cheap mortgages and cheap gas built this sprawling landscape of tan and gray stucco homes, iron gates and golf course communities. And the people who flocked here over the last decade -- upwardly mobile young families in pursuit of lower taxes and wholesome neighborhoods -- emerged as a Republican voting bloc crucial to President Bush's 2004 reelection. * Feeling the pinch Feeling the pinch But listen to Anna Rodriguez and her neighbors who gather nightly on lawn chairs to unwind, and a change comes into focus that could shift...

A mysterious Russian billionaire has trumped his big-spending rivals and broken a world record by splashing out €500 million (£392 million) on one of the most sumptuous villas on the French Riviera. The price of the Villa Leopolda, a Belle Époque mansion on the heights of Villefrance, has amazed estate agents but fuelled local worries that the invasion of Russian money on the Côte d'Azur is getting out of hand. Since the early 1990s, Russian oligarchs, drawn by memories of the Riviera-mad old Russian aristocracy, have been piling into seaside properties at Cap Ferrat, Cap d'Antibes, Saint-Tropez and the other...

A mysterious Russian billionaire has trumped his big-spending rivals and broken a world record by splashing out €500 million (£392 million) on one of the most sumptuous villas on the French Riviera. The price of the Villa Leopolda, a Belle Époque mansion on the heights of Villefrance, has amazed estate agents but fuelled local worries that the invasion of Russian money on the Côte d'Azur is getting out of hand..........[snip] [snip]...Russian excess is feeding discontent among poorer people. Pierrette, a housekeeper for one Russian, said: “I attended a party where the guests had fun throwing burning €500 notes into the...

There's a new land grab starting in America. Foreign money, which up to now has focused its attention on investing in iconic commercial real estate - like Barneys New York and the Chrysler Building - is now moving to scoop up tens of thousands of discounted foreclosed homes across the country. One sovereign fund, said to have earmarked $29 billion to purchase foreclosed residential real estate, recently hired a West Coast mortgage broker and is starting to search for bargains, The Post has learned. The search, which is being carried out, in part, by Field Check Group mortgage consultant Mark...

Taking advantage of the foreclosed home glut, it would appear unnamed overseas entities are attempting to gain a foothold, not just in our economy, but soon in our neighborhoods. There's a new land grab starting in America. Foreign money, which up to now has focused its attention on investing in iconic commercial real estate - like Barneys New York and the Chrysler Building - is now moving to scoop up tens of thousands of discounted foreclosed homes across the country. This has an ominous feel to it.

There's a new land grab starting in America. Foreign money, which up to now has focused its attention on investing in iconic commercial real estate - like Barneys New York and the Chrysler Building - is now moving to scoop up tens of thousands of discounted foreclosed homes across the country....

California's Central Valley, one of the nation's foreclosure epicenters, it seems the only real estate brokerage business with potential buyers to spare is Repo Home Tours, a bus operator that takes weekly jaunts through the hard-hit neighborhoods of cities like Modesto, Calif., showing passengers hundreds of potential bargains in one afternoon. Every time one of the brightly colored, red-topped buses rolls through the small farming city, Modesto residents are reminded of the chain of events that brought the vulture tours to pass. Poor underwriting of mortgages, bad lending that required no income documentation, and subprime loans made to buyers who...

(Fines, legal action possible in dispute over land use) Wales, WI - The kettle is hot, but the corn isn't popping just yet. Threats of daily fines and a lawsuit, all over a 7-acre stand of corn, have people talking in the small village of Wales, just west of Waukesha. Property owner Kent Hanson says the corn crop is better for the community than a plot of unchecked, unsightly weeds.Village President Jeffrey Flaws wants the corn taken out because more property taxes can be collected if the land remains under business use and is not converted to the much cheaper...

The Pending Home Sales Index of the National Association of Realtors,a forward-looking indicator based on contracts signed in June, rose 5.3 percent to 89.0... The rise in pending home sales was broad-based with all four regions showing gains... Sales gains have been consistently strong in recent months in Sacramento, Calif.; Las Vegas; and Ft. Myers, Fla., where affordability conditions have greatly improved...

An African-American real estate magnate sees an opening to profit from the spiraling U.S. housing market.There is no shortage of gloom in the Southern California housing market, as one key indicator recently saw home values in Los Angeles fall 24.5 percent from a year ago. But those spiraling fortunes are helping Barrington Malcolm build a dynasty. Malcolm, 42, runs Dynasty Dynamics, Inc., a multimillion dollar, privately owned property company that keeps a low profile, but has been a major player in the high-stakes California real estate market for more than 20 years. Dynasty owns a major portfolio of properties, including...

Pulte Homes applauds President Bush for signing into law today a comprehensive housing bill passed earlier by Congress. With record amounts of housing inventory and stagnant consumer demand continuing to drive down prices nationwide, Pulte Homes believes the $7,500 tax credit for first-time homebuyers included in the legislation can provide a much-needed shot in the arm to the housing industry. "We expect the $7,500 tax credit to get more first-time homebuyers off the sidelines and into a home," said Richard J. Dugas, Jr., president and CEO of Pulte Homes. "That, in turn, will free up home sellers who can then...

There's been a lot of discussion about how much the new housing bill passed by Congress will help individuals facing foreclosure. Some will be able to keep their homes, to be sure. But there's a different provision of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act that I want to focus on -- the much-trumpeted tax credit for first-time homebuyers. A tax credit is much more valuable than a deduction. A credit reduces dollar for dollar the amount of tax you owe. A deduction merely reduces the amount of your income that is taxable. Under the new law, certain homeowners will be...

The collapse of the housing bubble is likely to eliminate most, if not all, of the gains that families had made in accumulating wealth over the last two decades, according to a new study from the Center for Economic Policy & Research in Washington, DC. In the report, entitled The Impact of the Housing Crash on Family Wealth [pdf file], the authors project that the sharpest falloffs are projected to occur for the youngest families. If housing prices fall another 10%, as they seem likely to do, the study estimates that families will have a net worth anywhere from 56%...

BENTONVILLE, Ark. -- Dennis Pflueger and his wife won a rent-free year in a nice new house in an expensive subdivision not far from the headquarters of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. As part of the prize, they then have the option to buy the four-bedroom home for $452,000. Mr. Pflueger, a telephone-cable installer who describes himself as an "old redneck," is in the middle of his free year. But the Pfluegers are a bit lonely. Just one other family lives in any of the 28 new or unfinished houses on Foxboro Court. ...Since real-estate tanked, many new planned communities across the...

Our housing finance system has been broken for quite some time, creating perverse incentives for borrowers and lenders....a major financial bailout of the system is probably inevitable. Conservatives can rightly argue that had Congressional Democrats not blocked the various initiatives of the Bush administration to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the past five years, we would not be sitting at the precipice like we are today. First, Congress rejected a proposal that Fannie and Freddie be barred from paying dividends if they are receiving injections of capital from the federal government. Freddie Mac paid $1.6 billion in dividends...

It looks almost like an average-size house that's been sliced in half. At 12 feet wide, the neat, new single-family home is squeezed onto the slenderest of strips of land on a Brooklyn Park street of modest, post-World War II houses. The home joins an 18-foot-wide one built in the past year in the community that spans Anne Arundel County and Baltimore City. A similar house is planned for another of the 25-foot-wide empty lots in the area. While building on these infill lots in mature, developed communities with established roads, sidewalks and other infrastructure is considered "smart growth," residents...

California's battered homes market may be hitting bottom, suggesting a national housing recovery may follow, veteran banking analyst Charles Peabody said on Friday, citing a rebound in home sales as renters become owners. As goes California, the most populous state, so goes the rest of the United States, according to Peabody... Reasons to believe California home prices will firm may be found in data from the California Association of Realtors, Peabody said. Notably, buyers are responding to sharply lower home prices. The realtors' group reports the state's June home sales rose 17.5 percent from a year earlier while its median...

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Thursday said new economic data prove that the economic stimulus plan has successfully propped up the U.S. economy, but said it will take additional months for the housing market -- the biggest risk to the economy -- to fully recover. That said, his focus going forward will be on the housing and capital markets, he said in a speech at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington. "Our first and most urgent priority is working through the housing downturn and capital market turmoil and that will be our priority until these situations are resolved,"...

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson spoke today on the Markets and Economy at the Exchequer Club, in Washington D.C. As part of his remarks he provided an overview of the current state of the housing market... Foreclosure starts as a share of total outstanding mortgages have risen from 0.4 percent to 1.0 percent since the beginning of 2006... At the current sales rate, there is a ten month inventory of new single-family homes on the market, and an 11 month inventory of existing single-family homes. This compares with a historical average of about six to seven months... New home sales appear...

The massive 600 page tax bill, supposedly created to help get the housing market back on its feet, has a clause that will create huge incentive for some to sell second homes and thus put added pressure on the housing market. Taxpayers have played hopscotch, moving from home to vacation home to the next home, etc. and avoiding income taxes on the sale of each one...That free ride is at an end...

The S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index, a closely watched gauge of U.S. home prices, show price declines continued to worsen in May, with every region measured showing year-over-year drops for the second straight month. David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the Index Committee at Standard and Poor's, discusses the latest S&P/Case Shiller home-price index, which showed price declines continued to worsen in May. (July 29) Separately, consumers' take on the economy stagnated in July, although there was some sign moods may be improving over the economy's longer run prospects, a report Tuesday said. According to the S&P/Case-Shiller indices, home prices in...

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Monday outlined plans for the four biggest U.S. banks to issue new bonds to stimulate mortgage lending, the latest in a series of steps to aid the troubled housing market. Paulson outlined rules to issue so-called covered bonds backed by mortgage loans. The instruments are popular in Europe but had little appeal in the U.S. until demand for mortgage-backed securities plummeted because of soaring home loan foreclosures. C,JPM,BAC,WFC...have signed up to issue covered bonds, seen as less risky than mortgage-backed securities. "Covered bonds have the potential to increase mortgage financing...

Home prices fell by the steepest rate ever in May, according to The Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller 20-city index. No city in the Case-Shiller 20-city index saw price gains in May, the second straight month that's happened. The monthly indices have not recorded an overall home price increase in any month since August 2006...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Prices of U.S. single-family homes plunged at a record pace in May from a year earlier, with each of the 20 regions monitored showing annual declines for a second month, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller home price indexes reported on Tuesday. The S&P/Case Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas fell 0.9 percent in May from April, bringing the measure down 15.8 percent from May 2007.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The downward spiral of U.S. housing prices still has a way to go and homes were overvalued by between 8 percent to 20 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to research by an International Monetary Fund economist published on Friday. In his report "What goes up must come down? House price dynamics in the United States," IMF economist Vladimir Klyuev used several economic techniques to determine by how much U.S. home prices are overvalued. Klyuev drew from a government study of single-family home prices to conclude that values were "around 14 percent above equilibrium...

Property assessments questioned By Tabatha Hunter Staff Writer // tabathah@nwanews.com Posted on Saturday, July 26, 2008 URL: http://www.nwanews.com/bcdr/News/64125/ BENTONVILLE — Benton County Assessor Bill Moutray met with local legislators Friday morning to discuss the property assessments his office recently sent out to Benton County property owners. Many of the assessments showed dramatic increases in value despite a sluggish economy, increasing foreclosures and $ 4-a-gallon gasoline. “ I believe personally that these assessments are wrong, and I want to know what we can do to fix it, ” said state Sen. Kim Hendren, R-Gravette. “ It is not right, and it...

WHO'S ZOOMIN' WHO?: The House has passed a housing bill that is designed to encourage delinquent mortgage borrowers to refinance into FHA-insured mortgages and to stimulate sales of empty houses, among other things. The Senate is expected to pass the bill, called the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (H.R. 3221), and the president is expected to sign it. As a taxpayer, there's some stuff you won't like, and some stuff that you'll appreciate. (That's a pun, one that I'll explain shortly.) I also recommend that you read Kay Bell's tax blog today, too. She addresses some of these...

Mortgage programs that helped nearly 79,000 people buy homes using government-insured loans last year would be eliminated as part of a broader housing package that Congress expects to pass this week, key lawmakers said. Under these programs, nonprofit groups provide buyers with money for down payments. Home sellers then reimburse the organizations and pay an administrative fee. More than half a million people -- including many first-time home buyers, minorities and single mothers -- have bought homes this way in the past decade using loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration. But the FHA said seller-funded down payments present the...

HOME owners could be forced to turn their houses green before they can sell them under a proposal before the State Government. Planning Minister Justin Madden yesterday refused to comment on the proposal. The Master Builders Association wants laws to make it compulsory for owners of all existing homes to meet minimal environmental standards before they are allowed to sell them. The changes will cost each homeowner hundreds of dollars but the MBA says buyers of newly built homes are already being forced to meet five-star standards and they shouldn't be the only ones bearing the burden of helping the...

Cuban President Raul Castro is giving over more state-owned land to private owners. http://youtube.com/watch?v=4xLR4g7wcN8

Citigroup chairman Win Bischoff has warned that house prices in Britain and the United States are likely to keep falling for another two years. Bischoff told the BBC in an interview that he expects it will take two years for the markets to stabilise...

Housing Numbers Were Skewed, Lehman Says (RTTNews) - Housing starts were biased higher in June due to a change in the building code in New York City, observe the analysts at Lehman Brothers. Starts jumped 9.1% to 1.066 million in June as multi-family construction in the Northeast surged 102.6%. Effective July 1, the 421-a tax incentive program for multi-family construction in NYC will expire, encouraging builders to rush to start construction. This also pushed up permits for multi-family construction in the Northeast, which jumped 73%, as developers rushed to lay foundation after receiving permits. We expect a reversal in multi-family...

Thousands of new homes are set to be built on the green belt over the next 20 years under Government plans to force local councils to allow development on previously protected land across the south east. Waste incinerators and landfill sites could also be constructed on green-belt land, parks and even areas of outstanding natural beauty, under the Government proposals released today. Ministers want almost 100 new homes to be built every day in the south east for the next 20 years and are preparing to over-rule local opposition by allowing towns to spread into the green belt. The Government...