Minorities Affected Most as New York Foreclosures Rise
Mich. Lawmakers Agree on 90-day Foreclosure Bill
The Associated Press
Michigan lawmakers struck a deal Wednesday to give homeowners facing foreclosure a 90-day window to stay in their house and potentially work out something with their lender. The legislation lets homeowners delay foreclosure proceedings for 90 days if, after getting a notice of foreclosure, they meet with a housing counselor and the bank.
Wall Street Journal
Home construction unexpectedly fell during April, brought down by a large decline in apartment groundbreakings that offset a modest gain in single-family housing starts. Single-family starts climbed 2.8% to 368,000, after rising 0.3% in March and remaining flat in February. Construction of housing with two or more units dropped 46.1% to 90,000; within that category, groundbreakings of homes with five or more units -- or multifamily -- were 42.2% lower.
My Personal Credit Crisis
New York Times
If there was anybody who should have avoided the mortgage catastrophe, it was I. As an economics reporter for The New York Times, I have been the paper’s chief eyes and ears on the Federal Reserve for the past six years. I watched Alan Greenspan and his successor, Ben S. Bernake, at close range. I wrote several early-warning articles in 2004 about the spike in go-go mortgages. Before that, I had a hand in covering the Asian financial crisis of 1997, the Russia meltdown in 1998 and the dot-com collapse in 2000. I know a lot about the curveballs that the economy can throw at us. But in 2004, I joined millions of otherwise-sane Americans in what we now know was a catastrophic binge on overpriced real estate and reckless mortgages. Nobody duped or hypnotized me. Like so many others — borrowers, lenders and the Wall Street dealmakers behind them — I just thought I could beat the odds.
Anatomy of an Economic Meltdown
The Associated Press
How did it get this bad? For two years, economic turmoil in the United States throbbed from a few areas of isolated distress — dark bruises on a national map that was otherwise unscarred. Even the deflating housing bubble was confined mostly to areas like California's inland valleys, Las Vegas and Florida, while manufacturing communities in Michigan and the South struggled to keep workers in their jobs. The Associated Press Economic Stress Map, a new snapshot of our national pain, shows that the economy was hurting, but it didn't demand a nationwide lifestyle adjustment. Then came the autumn of 2008. Banks failed, Congress poured billions into hopeful fixes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted, and soon the regional misery began expanding nationwide.
Wall Street Journal
More housing pain may be on the way for high-end housing markets that had until recently avoided the worst of the housing bubble. The Orange County Register carries a report Monday with a look at where foreclosures are and aren’t selling. Many of the California coastal areas are seeing higher rates of unsold foreclosure inventory, a sign that banks are less willing to take the kind of hit that they may need to in order to liquidate foreclosures.