We extend your Money Senses
by Charles Wheelan, Ph.D.
Housing prices dropped by over 11 percent at the beginning of this year, the largest drop in the 20 years that such data have been collected. Thank goodness.
Restoring Financial Sanity
Why are plummeting real estate prices good news? Because it’s the first sign that sanity is returning to the market. And a sane […]
Wednesday February 20
By Gerri Willis, CNN
Mortgage payments sucking you dry?Boomers short on retirement savings may have another option: reverse mortgages. Can these complicated products fill the gap?
Reverse mortgages are exactly that. Instead of paying the bank, the bank pays you. It’s a type of loan where your equity is converted into cash.
These mortgages […]
By Dawn Kopecki
With the credit markets in turmoil and housing prices tumbling, people from Wall Street to Main Street are wondering what can and should be done to minimize the damage to the broader economy. Should the Federal Reserve do more to bring confidence back to the markets? Should state legislatures take action to prevent […]
David Lazarus:
Consumer Confidential
For consumers, there’s little reason to worry
August 17, 2007
Financial turmoil at Countrywide Financial Corp., the country’s biggest mortgage lender, might have many people wondering whether their home loans are in trouble. And what about funds deposited in Countrywide’s affiliated savings and loan operation, Countrywide Bank?
From a consumer’s perspective, experts say, there currently isn’t […]
By Alex Veiga, AP Business Writer
Lenders’ Prime Mortgage Woes Are a Sign of Even Bigger Problems to Come, Analysts Say
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Here’s a scary thought about the latest bad news on housing: A surprising increase in late loan payments and defaults among home owners with good credit is so far coming from […]
By Ruth Mantell
Greater regulation is needed to ensure that America’s most vulnerable home-loan borrowers are protected from unscrupulous lenders as well as confusing and pricey mortgages, consumer advocates said Tuesday.
“We have a regulatory failure here on a level that is frankly putting the economy at risk,” said David Berenbaum, executive vice president of the National […]
by Jack M. Guttentag
Because the mortgage market has slowed in recent months, loan providers (lenders and mortgage brokers) find themselves with excess capacity. Rather than go out of business or fire loan officers, many have taken to purchasing mortgage leads.
What Are Mortgage Leads?
Mortgage leads are packets of information about consumers — consumers loan providers […]
Forbes Magazine
By Bernard Condon
You’re in luck. Your mortgage lender has flipped, sliced and diced your loan–and now no one knows who holds it.
In 2006 Michelle Tucker, a 35-year-old UPS package processor and mother of two, was hit by a one-two punch. Her husband had surgery on his shoulder and was forced to stop taking […]
AP
‘Piggybacking’ Roils Credit Industry
By J.W. Elphinstone, AP Business Writer
AP IMPACT: Services That Let Home Buyers Piggyback on Others’ Credit Roiling the Industry
Only a low credit score stood between Alipio Estruch and a mortgage to buy a $449,000 Spanish-style house in Weston, Fla., a few miles west of Fort Lauderdale.
Instead of spending several […]
By Jeremy W. Peters
Published: May 17, 2007
NEW YORK: Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, helped soothe concerns that problems in the subprime mortgage market would spread, saying Thursday that the Fed saw “no serious broader spillover.”
In a speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Bernanke also appeared skeptical of tighter regulations for mortgage lenders […]