Foreclosure Filings Increase at Slowest Pace in Four Years
March 11, 2010 — Wall Street Journal

U.S. foreclosure filings rose 6% in February from a year earlier, the smallest increase in four years, according to RealtyTrac.

Severe winter weather temporarily slowed the processing of foreclosure records in some states.

FHA considers down payment requirements
March 10, 2010 — Washington Post

The Federal Housing Administration has concluded that its loan volume would have dipped by 40 percent in the next fiscal year and that 300,000 first-time home buyers would have been shut out of the housing market if it had raised its down payment requirements, as critics have pressured it to do, a top housing official plans to tell Congress on Thursday.

Fed recovers, gets new look as financial regulator
March 10, 2010 — Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve, still dusting itself off from a fight that threatened to trim its powers, could emerge from a congressional overhaul of banking rules as the top cop over the nation's largest financial institutions.

Politics, shaky economy create no rush to restructure Fannie and Freddie
March 11, 2010 — Washington Post

The federal government has spent the past half year seeking to roll back its emergency efforts at propping up the financial markets -- with the notable exception of its involvement in mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

National House Prices Down for Sixth Consecutive Month: IAS
March 10, 2010 — DSNews

Marking the sixth straight month of declines, national house prices fell 2.3 percent in January, according to the latest IAS360 House Price Index (HPI) released Wednesday by Denver-based Integrated Asset Services, LLC (IAS).

Bills Could Help Slow Foreclosures
March 9, 2010 — The Daily News

Sitting lenders down with borrowers in danger of losing their homes to foreclosure is the goal of a pilot program that would be created by pending state legislation.
Lawmakers from Memphis are sponsoring companion bills in the state House and Senate that, among other things, would set up a foreclosure mediation program in Shelby County.

Baird & Warner tool finds foreclosures
March 9, 2010 — Inman News

Chicago-based independent real estate brokerage Baird & Warner has launched a foreclosure search tool on its Web site, the company announced Monday.

Sheriff's auctions handle foreclosures
March 8, 2010 — Star-Tribune

Natrona County's biggest auction handles hundreds of thousands of dollars of business weekly.

Helping upside-down home owners stave off foreclosure
March 9, 2010 — Detroit Free Press

Home foreclosures -- those already in progress and the tens of thousands of new filings economists anticipate this year -- threaten to undermine Michigan's economic recovery before it can get under way. So this state's elected representatives in Washington should do everything they can to promote a sensible Obama administration initiative that could expedite the sale of distressed properties.

Foreclosures drive down home values in northeast Phoenix
March 8, 2010 — Arizona Republic

Things got worse in 2009 for homeowners and sellers in northeast Phoenix.
Until last year, the northeastern ZIP codes that cover the area between the Phoenix Mountain Preserve and Pinnacle Peak Road were holding up to the economic recession reasonably well.

Can a New Web Site Streamline Home Buying?
March 4, 2010, The Real Deal

Matt Daimler, a technology wiz with little background in real estate, thinks he could solve some of the most vexing problems in New York City residential sales today.  His new site, Buyfolio.com, which launched Tuesday, allows buyers and brokers to communicate through a single Web page. After seeing listings on sites like Streeteasy.com and the NYTimes.com — or even brokerage sites like Corcoran.com and PrudentialElliman.com — users can save the listing to their personalized Buyfolio.com page and evaluate, compare, and organize them.

What Orange County ZIP Has Biggest Hike in Mortgage Defaults?
March 5, 2010, Orange County Register

Here’s how filings of notices of default —  the first step in the foreclosure process — compare from Q4 of 2009 with the previous quarter and the previous year, according to an analysis by DataQuick. It’s a mixed bag: Countywide, default notices are down 24% from the previous quarter, but up 29% year over year.

Feb. Unemployment Rate Remains Unchanged at 9.7 Percent
March 5, 2010, Washington Post

Job losses were mild in February despite extreme snowstorms in much of the country, according to a government report released Friday, suggesting that while the labor market remains weak it is no longer getting worse. Employers cut 36,000 net jobs, the Labor Department said, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 9.7 percent. Economists had expected losses of 50,000 or more jobs and for the jobless rate to tick upward.

Borrowers Miss Out on Billions in Savings
March 3, 2010, Wall Street Journal

The Federal Reserve has pushed mortgage rates to near half-century lows, but millions of U.S. homeowners haven't benefited from that because they can't — or won't — refinance. Falling home prices have left many owners with little or no equity, making it harder to qualify for refinancing. Moreover, stricter lending standards and higher fees by banks and mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and declining incomes have made it tougher and less attractive for borrowers to seek new loans. Around 37% of all borrowers with 30-year conforming fixed-rate mortgages — who collectively hold about $1.2 trillion of home loans — have mortgage rates of 6% or higher, according to investment bank Credit Suisse. Many could reduce their rates by a full percentage point if they refinanced at current rates, about 5%. More than half could lower their rates nearly three-quarters of a percentage point, according to Credit Suisse.

Mortgage Rate Drop Below 5% Stirs Demand
March3, 2010, CNBC

U.S mortgage rates retreated below 5 percent last week, propping demand for home loans after purchase applications sank to a nearly 13-year low the prior week, Mortgage Bankers Association data showed on Wednesday. February's volatile swings in housing demand comes on the heels of a steep January sales slump, blamed mainly on unusually harsh winter weather. The industry group's market index, which measures requests for loans to buy homes and refinance, rose by a seasonally adjusted 14.6 percent in the week ended Feb. 26 to the highest level since mid-December.

Detroit Homes Sell for $1 Amid Mortgage and Car Industry Crisis
March2, 2010, The Guardian

One in five houses left empty as foreclosures mount and property prices drop by 80 percent. Some might say Jon Brumit overpaid when he stumped up $100 (£65) for a whole house. Drive through Detroit neighborhoods once clogged with the cars that made the city the envy of America and there are homes to be had for a single dollar. You find these houses among boarded-up, burnt-out and rotting buildings lining deserted streets, places where the population is shrinking so fast entire blocks are being demolished to make way for urban farms.

MBA Mum on How They Fixed Their Own Mortgage Woes
February 6, 2010, Wall Street Journal

Is the Mortgage Bankers Association embarrassed by the way it resolved its own mortgage mess? In any case, officials of the trade group are refusing to provide details on that question. Surely, many Americans could sympathize with the MBA’s plight. Like them, it made a bad bet on real estate at the peak of the bubble and then watched the value of that property fall far below the loan balance, a predicament known as being “under water.” Unlike most of those other distressed borrowers, however, the MBA seems to have found a way out of its real estate nightmare. On Friday, CoStar Group Inc., a provider of commercial real estate data, announced that it had agreed to buy the MBA’s 10-story headquarters building in Washington, D.C., for $41.3 million. The price is well below the $79 million the trade group says it paid for the glass-walled building in 2007, while it was still under construction.

Home Prices Will Not go up Anytime Soon, Says Barclays Capital
February 26, 2010, Housing Wire

The rate at which home prices are dropping may be slowly coming to a halt across the United States, with analysts at Barclays Capital predicting only a 4 or 5% dip left to go before stabilization. But the rate of appreciation on the back side of that bottoming out is likely to “muddle along for the next few years,” they say in a weekly letter to investors.