It’s OK to Walk Away, A Law Professor Argues
It’s OK to Walk Away, A Law Professor Argues
The Wall Street Journal
Many Americans are enraged by the thought that some people are simply “walking away” from their homes—in other words, ceasing to make monthly loan payments and waiting for the lender to foreclose. How irresponsible! How unfair to those of us who do pay our bills!
Brent T. White, an associate professor of law at the University of Arizona, has a different perspective: “Homeowners should be walking away in droves,” he writes in a new discussion paper entitled “Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis.”
Small Banks Move In as Giants Falter
The New York Times
The Texas banker Edward Speed wants his fellow Texans to think small.
Sensing an opportunity to capitalize on public outrage over big national banks rescued by taxpayer bailouts, Mr. Speed has started a campaign urging Texans to take their cash out of banks like Wells Fargo and turn it over to small homegrown institutions like his, the Texas Dow Employees Credit Union in Lake Jackson near the Gulf Coast.
Foreign investors dominate in South Florida real estate purchases
Miami Herald
In order to help his clients close on units at the luxury St. Tropez condominium in Sunny Isles Beach, developer Joe Milton recently put up $100 million of his company's cash to set up a mortgage company to fund loans.
That's because foreign buyers -- a key factor in the recent surge in home sales in South Florida -- are often locked out of the market if they don't have cash in hand.
Regulators Close Down Nine More Institutions
DSNews
Collapses of regional community banks continue to pad the FDIC’s failed bank list. The agency stepped in to close down nine on Friday – three in California, three in Texas, two in Illinois, and one in Arizona.
With these latest closures, the number of institutions to go under in 2009 now totals 115 – the highest number of failures in a single year since the savings & loan crisis.
Congress Passes Higher Loan Limit Extension for Federally-Backed Mortgages
DSNews
Legislation was approved by both the House and Senate Thursday that extends the higher loan limits currently in place for mortgages backed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).
Lawmakers temporarily raised the limits for these federally-funded home loans back in 2008 as part of a national economic stimulus package, to $729,750 for high-cost areas. But that increase was set to expire at the end of this year, dropping the size of loans eligible for GSE and FHA funding to $625,500. The new measure stretches the run for the higher loan limit through December 31, 2010.