‘Twas the season of giving when California Attorney General (AG) Kamala Harris sued government sponsored entities (GSEs) Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (Frannie), just a few days before Christmas. The California AG filed the two suits not long after having seceded from the national negotiations which were underway between the Big Banks and a number [...]

Coming by a down payment acceptable to today’s mortgage lenders is altering the outlook for homebuyers in this post-Millennium Boom era, following 30 years of ever relaxing mortgage qualification requirements. While 100% financing came to be regarded as the standard during the Millennium Boom, today’s homebuyers in need of purchase-assist financing are again making down [...]

Lenders will soon be able to access information never before made available in financial reports.  Data analysis company CoreLogic has already introduced a new type of credit report which takes into account an individual’s rental payment history, evictions, child support judgments, applications for payday loans and payment history on utility and cellphone bills, to name [...]

For every two homes available for sale, there is another in lender shadow inventory, according to a report by CoreLogic. Nationally in October 2011, 1.6 million residential units were shadow inventory comprising property delinquent 90 days or more, in foreclosure or real estate owned (REO) and thus were not yet listed with a multiple listing [...]

The underlying cause of stunted home sales volume and sticky pricing may be the epidemic of floundering Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO) scores during the Lesser Depression, according to a recent FICO study. Roughly 50 million American consumers experienced a FICO score drop of at least 20 points in 2008-2009 following the housing bust and financial [...]

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae’s (collectively Frannie’s) hands are full of real estate owned properties (REOs) and it doesn’t look like they are going anywhere anytime soon. Frannie held 180,000 REOs as of October 1, 2011 – a net drop of 16,000 from the 196,000 they owned three months earlier. This is only the second [...]

Updated on November 28, 2011 PMI Group, the nation’s third largest private mortgage insurer, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on November 23, 2011, listing $736 million in debt. In October 2011 the company was seized by the Arizona Department of Insurance which now has full possession, management and control of the company. PMI Group warned [...]

This article discusses the position of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae against principal reduction for negative equity homeowners and evaluates the moral argument over mortgage debt forgiveness for California homeowners.

As part of the Administration’s plan to increase homebuyer use of private mortgage insurance (PMI) on mortgages underwritten or purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has proposed changes to shift the risk of loss on mortgage defaults and foreclosures from the U.S. Treasury to the private sector. The [...]

The housing market will continue to sit listlessly, but not on account of the recent Standard & Poor’s (S&P) credit downgrade of the U.S. and the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac . Though knee-jerk mortgage bankers cite a fear the downgrade will disrupt their mortgage market, the overwhelming consensus is general weak [...]