Free Republic

In September, Susan Rodolfi celebrated an unusual anniversary: five years of missed mortgage payments. She is like a ghost of the housing market’s painful past, one of thousands of Americans who have skipped years of mortgage payments and are still living in their homes. Now a legal quirk could bring a surreal ending to her foreclosure case and many others around the country: They may get to keep their homes without ever having to pay another dime. The reason, lawyers for homeowners argue, is that the cases have dragged on too long. There are tens of thousands of homeowners who...

Some 5.4 million homes, or 10.4 percent of all homes with a mortgage, were still in a negative equity position, or "underwater," in the fourth quarter of 2014, according to CoreLogic, as their owners owe more on the mortgage than the home is currently worth. This is down considerably —18.9 percent, from a year ago—but it still keeps these borrowers from putting their homes on the market, because they would lose money. .. Additionally, of the 49.9 million U.S. homes with a mortgage, approximately 10 million (20 percent) have less than 20 percent equity, and 1.4 million have less than...

More than a quarter of car buyers still owed an average of $4,257 more than their vehicles were worth. Unlike a home, which can increase in value, a new car loses 11 percent of its value on average the minute it’s driven off the dealership’s lot. After five years of depreciation, the same car has lost two-thirds of its value and is typically worth just 37 percent of its original purchase price. The problem is that many car loans now exceed five years. Although the longer loans mean lower monthly payments, they leave many owners with negative equity in a...

When they moved into the house in November 2005, Kofi was earning $82,740 as an IT consultant for a government contractor, and Comfort, then 43, was making $30,000 as an administrative assistant. But in the overheated mortgage market of the time, they said everyone told them that they could buy a $600,000 house. They made a $60,000 down payment and all their mortgage payments for more than 2½ years — through September 2008. But the house was financed with subprime loans, which reset to higher rates after short time periods, creating what are known as “shock payments.” The Boatengs said...

A study from the Texas Association of Realtors shows international buyers pumped more than $11 billion dollars into the Texas economy between March of 2013 and 2014. One Austin Realtor says people from outside of the U.S. are looking for a secure investment. “An international client can come into the Austin market, get a great value for what they’re buying and almost be insured that there’s profitability in that and that’s unique to the world as a whole,” said J Kuper, owner of Kuper Sotheby’s International Realty.

A research team from China's University of Science and Technology detected tremors in the sea near the Malaysia Vietnam border on March 8 hours after MH370 disappeared from the radar screen. In a report published on its website, the Wen Lianxing Research Team said it suspected the tremor to relate to the missing MAS plane because the area "is not within seismic zone." "The incident happened at 2.55am on March 8, about one-and-a-half hours after MH370 lost contact at 1.30am. "One of the two possible locations is (an area) about 116km to the northeast of MH370's last confirmed location," it...

About 25 years ago, I started diving in the clear blue waters of Zakynthos. Many times I passed through the water seeing small broken pieces of ceramics and I asked myself where they were from. I thought that maybe there was something buried in the sand. I believed that there was definitely something ancient around the area that deserved more investigation. For many years I didn’t find any other clues to prove this. My love for the sea made me buy an underwater camera to start taking photographs of my diving excursions. It was then that the secret was...

While you were out shopping Sunday for those last-minute holiday gifts, the Navy pushed ahead with its own vision of an underwater sugar plum: a fleet of “long endurance, transoceanic gliders harvesting all energy from the ocean thermocline.” Fact is, the Navy has been seeking—pretty much under the surface—a way to do underwater what the Air Force has been doing in the sky: prowl stealthily for long periods of time, and gather the kind of data that could turn the tide in war. The Navy’s goal is to send an underwater drone, which it calls a “glider,” on a roller-coaster-like...

**SNIP** Don’t think Democrats on Capitol Hill haven’t noticed, either. While party leaders toe the party line, such as DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’ claim that “Democrats will run on ObamaCare and win,” the rest of the Democrats are starting to wonder whether their party leadership is in denial: Democratic leaders claim the bungled launch of Obamacare is just the latest news sensation — a media-stirred tempest that looks in the heat of the moment like it could upend the midterm election, but ends up fizzling well before voters head to the polls. Some party strategists say they’re in denial....

Bulls Scarp could be the most fascinating and important archaeological site waiting to be surveyed in the region. There’s just one little problem: That Ice Age rock ledge is under about 140 feet of seawater.But a team of scientists recently studied and mapped it from the ocean surface. Now the team is looking for partners to go back.“We haven’t been on the bottom to look for artifacts and that’s what we’re trying to do. We feel very strongly this area would have held populations of people,” said Scott Harris, College of Charleston geology professor.“I think it’s fantastic. I can just...

... [Franck Goddio's] results were impressive ... But it was an expedition he undertook in 2000 that really put him on the map, so to speak: He managed to locate Thonis-Heracleion, an ancient port city (built circa 800 B.C.!) that's now completely submerged off the coast of Egypt. The hyphenated name hints at its cosmopolitan nature: The Egyptians called it Thonis, the Greeks, Heracleion after a massive temple to Heracles that once stood at the site ...

In 1946, the United States conducted a series of nuclear weapon tests at Bikini Atoll in what’s known as Operation Crossroads. A total of two bombs were detonated to test the effects nuclear blasts had on naval warships. The second, named Baker, was the world’s first nuke to be detonated underwater. Due to the unique properties of underwater explosions, the Baker test produced a number of unique photographs that the world had never seen before.

Wall Street warns against using eminent domain to seize underwater mortgagesBy Peter Schroeder - 08/19/12 05:00 PM ET Heavy hitters in the financial industry are lining up against a new idea brewing among local government officials to help struggling homeowners by seizing control of their mortgages through eminent domain. With many areas of the country still digging out from the housing crisis, some local governments are considering taking on the underwater mortgages at a substantially lower price, thus making them more affordable for the borrower. With policymakers at the federal, state and local level struggling to find a way to...

Spying seems to be hardwired into Russian DNA and for decades the USSR and now Russia have sent Combat Divers a.k.a. “frogmen” on clandestine missions to infiltrate other countries’ military complexes by using their harbours as a gateways to enemy naval bases. Because of the aggressive nature of their missions (they are the invaders after all) these Spetsnaz (Russian special operations) units are armed with specialized APS and ASM-DT underwater rifles. APS Underwater rifle APS Underwater rifle The APS underwater rifle, developed in the mid 1970s, was Russia’s first attempt at an underwater long gun and the world’s first movement...

The latest quarterly report out of CoreLogic is as usual full of curious insights about the state of US housing. Key among them is the finding that "negative equity and near-negative equity mortgages accounted for 27.8 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage nationwide in the fourth quarter, up from 27.1 in the previous quarter. Nationally, the total mortgage debt outstanding on properties in negative equity increased from $2.7 trillion in the third quarter to $2.8 trillion in the fourth quarter." In other words, courtesy of no Mark To Market, there is at least $2.8 trillion in debt held...

President Barack Obama, whose economic acumen was shaped by left-wing, Big Government ideologues, wants to fix the housing market mess that government, in large part, is responsible for creating. His plan to tax big banks to raise money to guarantee refinanced loans for existing homeowners to lower their monthly payments is fundamentally flawed, almost certainly won't pass Congress, but it is political pandering of the first order. In an election year, is anyone surprised he would push something he knows won't happen while positioning himself as Rescuer-in-Chief? He can always blame Congress when it doesn't come to pass. The rest...

According to real estate data firm CoreLogic, about 11 million American homeowners are underwater, and half of all U.S. mortgages are owned by non-government lenders. On Wednesday, President Obama announced plans to help homeowners facing foreclosure. Obama is seeking to make interests rates for borrowers lower, and he plans to pay for the estimated $5 billion to $10 billion cost with a fee on the nation’s largest banks. “It is wrong for anyone to suggest that the only option for struggling, responsible homeowners is to sit and wait for the housing market to hit bottom,” Obama said. “I refuse to...

U.S. homeowners who owe more than their properties are worth got new help on Monday when a U.S. regulator expanded a government program in a step that could help up to one million borrowers. The Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, eased the terms of a refinancing program which helps so-called underwater borrowers who have been on time with payments but are unable to refinance. *snip* FHFA said it was scrapping a cap that prohibited borrowers whose mortgages exceeded 125 percent of their property's value from participating in the Home Affordable Refinance...

Las Vegas – Seeking to breathe new life into a sagging economy, President Obama will attempt an executive branch rescue of homeowners trying to refinance underwater mortgages, with a new initiative that lets people with little or no equity get a better interest rate at a reduced cost. The initiative, the first in a series of announcements expected this week by the president, applies to homeowners with federally guaranteed mortgages who are current on their payments. The revamped Home Affordable Refinance Program, which aims to avert foreclosures, is expected "to encourage new, lower-cost loans" to more homeowners who are paying...