City's Loan

I read an interesting report this morning written by an analyst who has actually put some thought into the aftermath of the subprime implosion. By his calculations, the subprime firms who have gone out of business generated approximately $280 billion of loans last year, a little more than 9% of all loans funded. The combination of these firms going out of business and tightened lending standards are creating a void in the amount of mortgage backed securities that were issued using these loans as collateral. Investors who purchased these securities will now have to look elsewhere for investments and borrowers ...

Here is a clip from Real Time with Bill Maher which aired Friday September 28th. I have never heard the housing slump sound or look this good. CNBC's Maria Bartiromo/Bill Maher Housing Bubble Video

Normally, homeowners in Atherton don't want a 15 year fixed rate because the payments are too high. Now there is a twist on a 15 year fixed rate that can keep your payment low! This loan has a 40 year term. Initially it is a 15 year fixed rate. During the 15 year fixed rate term, the payments are interest-only. Because the payments are interest-only, the payment is a lot lower than an amortized 15 year fixed rate.  Here's the neat part - if you pay principal during the 15 year fixed rate term, the payment decreases because the payment is based ...

Yesterday, Mrs. Clinton wrote the Secretary of the Treasury about her bailout plan. This whole idea of freezing mortgage rates and foreclosure bailouts is bad medicine with unbelievable side effects. The equivalent to taking a drug to treat your fever but it gives you cancer a year later. We need to let free markets work. Flush out the people who can't afford their homes and took out loans that they could never pay. Otherwise, the housing crisis that is now a credit meltdown will last much longer. Who would want to lend money to homeowners or other borrowers for that ...

There are some helpful tips today in the Orange County Register for homeowners who are searching for ways to catch up on their mortgage payments and to avoid foreclosure.Here’s the quick list:Talk to your lender as soon as possibleGet financial counselingConsider selling before foreclosure is finalThe overriding theme of the article, which was written with the help of industry experts, is to act fast.We couldn’t agree more — the quicker a distressed homeowner reaches out for assistance, the more options he or she will have from which to choose.And, if for some reason a resolution cannot be agreed upon to ...

The subprime fallout has made the once-slam-dunk home loans more difficult to obtain. While some neighborhoods continue to be very active, other areas have slowed considerably.In addition, the first notion of "back to school" already has hit many second-home owners who are beginning to schedule the "winterization" of the family cabin. Instead of going through another off-season with little use and significant maintenance, some owners will use the last few weeks of the summer season to show -- and hopefully sell -- the family getaway, raising for-sale real estate inventory levels in popular areas.If your house or cabin already ...

National Mortgage News will run an interview Monday with Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. In the interview, conducted Thursday, Mozilo tries to "clarify misconceptions in the media about why consumers are going delinquent on their mortgages. He blames a majority of the problem on job losses and sagging home prices -- not ARM resets," says NMN editor Paul Muolo."Resets are not the issue," Mozilo told NMN.Well, yeah... resets weren't an issue as long as home prices kept going up -- you just refinanced into another loan. Hopefully, NMN asked Mozilo why Countrywide cutback ARM production from 19.3 billion in August ...

The End is Near! The sky is falling! George Bush said things are great so it must be true. Ben Bernanke isn’t sure whether things are great so keeps lowering interest rates and crushing the dollar in the process. Your friendly banker knows things are not great. Your above average Foreclosure/Short Sale Investor is buying foreclosure properties at prices that are phenomenally low and feels like this foreclosure craze is the start of something big.Who is right? Maybe all of them and maybe none but I tend to side with the foreclosure investor. Not since the Great Depression has the ...

Well, you’ve probably heard by now that the Fed lowered rates by .25. So what does that mean? A couple of points to think about:1. What the Fed lowers is the shortest of the short term rates and it typically helps home equity loans but doesn’t matter much to mortgage rates.2. Why did they lower rates? Because the financial markets are hurting and they needed to at least appear to help out the economy and the markets. Just this week (and it’s only Tuesday at 5:00) we’ve seen UBS announce 10 BILLION in writedowns (losses) and Washington Mutual announced 1.4 ...

The number of national foreclosure filings was up 4% in February as Nevada reported the highest state foreclosure rate for the second month in a row with a 24% monthly increase from January, according to RealtyTrac.A total of 130,786 foreclosure filings were reported during the month, down 4% from January’s revised total but still up 12% from February 2006. The national foreclosure rate stood at one foreclosure filing for every 884 U.S. households in February, according to the foreclosure tracking company.RealtyTrac considers default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions as foreclosure filings."Based on our numbers for the first two ...