Unemployed homeowners with mortgages owned by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae (Frannie) now have the option of participating in a mortgage forbearance program. The revised policy took effect February 1, 2012 for Freddie Mac and will take place March 1, 2012 for Fannie Mae. Not all homeowners with a mortgage from Frannie – 60% of [...]

Housing prices in November 2011 remained level or dropped by 1-2 index points in all three home-pricing tiers in California’s three largest cities, according to the Case-Shiller price indexes (shown below). Pricing for high-tier homes has remained mostly flat and weak throughout 2010 and 2011, after a brief “dead cat bounce” rise in mid-2009. Average [...]

‘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 [...]

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 [...]

This article discusses the purported moral implications of a homeowner’s decision to strategically default and why no such implications exist for a strategically defaulting business.

This article discusses the complicated process of taking title to a home with a mortgage, and suggests homeowners create a revocable living trust to ensure the beneficiary of their estate is not subject to a mortgage’s due-on clause.

Purchase-assist financing for a Generation Y (Gen Y) family member by their parents or relative is an especially compelling opportunity in the current real estate market. Intrafamily loans benefit both the parent, as lender, and their offspring, as borrower. It also gets the child out of the house. Though mortgage rates are at record nominal [...]

2010 2009 2008 Estimated Pop. Aged 25-34 5,317,877 5,204,067 5,290,256 SFR Construction 25,502 25,454 164 Apt/Condo Construction 19,423 10,967 161 Chart last updated 7/10/11 Data courtesy of the Construction Industry Research Board (CIRB) and the US Census Bureau All forecasts are made by first tuesday based on current data, influential factors and market trends. This [...]

This article reviews a newly-developed Fair Issac Company (FICO) analytics model which predicts a borrower’s likelihood to exercise a strategic default and revisits the financial advantages of a strategic default for a negative equity homeowner.

Wall Street giant Goldman Sachs (Goldman) disputes a U.S. Senate report which named it a major contributor to the financial crisis. The report, released by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (the subcommittee), targeted Goldman for short selling mortgage securities to investors. Goldman’s home mortgage short was not the issue of concern in the investigation since [...]