08/30/2010 - Surprise! Banks help more homeowners than Obama - Banks have realized that foreclosing on home after home after home may not be in anyone's best interest -- least of all their own. So they've ramped up the number of loan modifications they're handing out to their delinquent clients. - www.cnn.com

08/26/2010 - Number Of Underwater Mortgages Falls, Thanks To Foreclosures - Real estate data provider CoreLogic said Thursday there were 11 million homes with so-called underwater mortgages at the end of June. That's down from 11.2 million at the end of March and represents the second consecutive quarterly decline. The number of underwater mortgages typically rises when home prices are falling. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/26/2010 - No New McMansions Sold in July - Not a single new home priced above $750,000 sold in July or June, Rosenberg notes. As for houses priced between $500,000 and $750,000, only 1,000 new units were sold last month. When it comes to new homes that did find buyers in July, more than 80% were priced under $300,000. - www.dailyfinance.com

08/25/2010 - More lenders modifying troubled home loans by extending mortgage terms to 40 years - More than half of the 390,000 mortgages already permanently modified through the federal government's Making Home Affordable Program have lengthened loan terms - in most cases extended from 30 years to 40 years, according to lenders and federal reports. - www.orlandosentinel.com

08/24/2010 - Home Sales PLUNGE To 15-Year Low -- Biggest Drop On Record - Sales were particularly weak among homes in the lower- to mid-priced ranges. For example, in the Midwest, homes priced between $100,000 and $250,000 tumbled nearly 47 percent. The plunge in home sales also magnified fears about the broader economy. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/24/2010 - Home Sales PLUNGE To 15-Year Low -- Biggest Drop On Record - Sales were particularly weak among homes in the lower- to mid-priced ranges. For example, in the Midwest, homes priced between $100,000 and $250,000 tumbled nearly 47 percent. The plunge in home sales also magnified fears about the broader economy. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/24/2010 - Existing home sales plunge 27% - The National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales sank 27.2% last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.83 million units, down from the downwardly revised rate of 5.26 million in June. Sales year-over-year were down 25.2%. The sales pace of all homes -- single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops -- is at the lowest since NAR began tracking the figure in 1999. - www.cnn.com

08/23/2010 - Foreclosure Study Shows Dramatic Value Drop - Nationwide, more than a half million homes fell into foreclosure in the first half of 2010. More than 900,000 were repossessed in 2009. "Foreclosed homes sell for less, not just a little bit less, but much less than comparable homes sold in the same area at the same time but voluntarily outside the foreclosure process," explains Harvard Professor of Economics John Campbell. "In fact, the discount on average is about 27% which is really a very large number." - www.foxnews.com

08/23/2010 - Neighbor's Foreclosure Can Hurt You. Study Shows Dramatic Value Drop - Nationwide, more than a half million homes fell into foreclosure in the first half of 2010. More than 900,000 were repossessed in 2009. Now a new study, conducted by MIT and Harvard researchers, reveals the drop in value to a foreclosed property is even more staggering than many would believe. And a foreclosure is bad news for the neighborhood... - www.foxnews.com

08/23/2010 - Real Estate Boom-Time Won't Be Returning Anytime Soon - Many real estate experts now believe that home ownership will never again yield rewards like those enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century, when houses not only provided shelter but also a plump nest egg. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/22/2010 - Housing Fades as a Means to Build Wealth, Analysts Say - If the long term is grim, the short term is grimmer. Housing experts are bracing themselves for Tuesday, when the sales figures for July will be released. The data is expected to show a drop of as much as 20 percent from last year. - www.nytimes.com

08/21/2010 - Post-Mortgage Meltdown, Where Do We Go Now? - "Homeowenership has gone from being pretty much an unmitigated good - something that would provide stability - and instead has thrown a huge cloud of doubt over the value of homeownership for a lot of people." - www.npr.com

08/21/2010 - America Fights Foreclosure: Lifelines For People Fighting To Keep Their Homes - One of the biggest national hotlines for free home counseling is 888-995-HOPE, run by the Congress-funded Home Preservation Foundation. To date, the HOPE hotline has counseled four million homeowners since 2008, and helped 70% avoid foreclosure within a year. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/21/2010 - AMERICANS RETHINK HOME OWNERSHIP - Post-Mortgage Meltdown, Where Do We Go Now? - The world we live in today is not quite the world that existed in 1950. "Homeowenership has gone from being pretty much an unmitigated good - something that would provide stability - and instead has thrown a huge cloud of doubt over the value of homeownership for a lot of people." - www.npr.com

08/21/2010 - One Couple's New American Dream: Rent, Don't Buy - Mark and Joanne sold their home in Milwaukee - a home they owned for 28 years - and moved to Chicago. The couple, both in their 50s, relocated for her job. And they decided to rent an apartment overlooking Lake Michigan. - www.npr.com

08/21/2010 - Foreclosure prevention program losing its punch - Only 36,695 troubled homeowners received long-term mortgage modifications in July under the Obama administration's Home Affordable Modification Program, known as HAMP. This brings the total to 434,717 borrowers who have successfully made it out of the trial phase. - www.cnn.com

08/20/2010 - Obama Housing Program Slowing To A Crawl While Homeowners Suffer - More than 2.3 million homes have been repossessed by lenders since the recession began in December 2007, according to foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. Economists expect the number of foreclosures to grow well into next year. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/20/2010 - Nearly 50 Percent Leave Obama Mortgage-Aid Program - More than 18 months after President Barack Obama announced a $75 billion program to help three to four million homeowners avoid foreclosure, the administration's primary foreclosure-prevention initiative is slowing to a crawl. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/20/2010 - Obama Administration Defends Lackluster Foreclosure Programs; Says Interest Rates Will Remain Low To Help Housing Market - In a nearly hour-long, wide-ranging interview with a small group of reporters from various publications, the senior official, who spoke frankly on the condition of anonymity: - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/20/2010 - Banks Increasingly Forced To Buy Back Bad Mortgages - Banks Stuck With Bill for Bad Loans. That case is not, however, showing any sign of prevailing as legal battles increase in number. Instead, it appears that big banks will be compelled to pay for their own sins as well as the sins of others. - www.nytimes.com

08/20/2010 - Obama Administration Defends Lackluster Foreclosure Programs; Says Interest Rates Will Remain Low To Help Housing Market - In short, the administration hasn't been aggressive enough, critics say. The senior official said the administration has taken the most effective and prudent steps possible to heal the economy. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/20/2010 - Latest victim of real estate slump -- Buy Owner - The Buy Owner real estate firm, known for its familiar ``Thanks, Buy Owner'' advertisements and lower-cost broker-free transactions, is liquidating as the housing market continues to struggle. The company filed last month for an assignment for the benefit of creditors in Broward County, which is similar to Chapter 7 federal bankruptcy but in state court. - www.miamiherald.com

08/19/2010 - 7 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Buy a Home - One of the biggest scams perpetrated on the American public is that owning a home is the "American Dream." It's more nightmare than dream as millions of Americans now know. But it has always been that way. Here's why. - www.dailyfinance.com

08/18/2010 - Famed Investor Bill Gross Calls For Massive Taxpayer-Backed Mortgage Refinance Initiative - In theory, the proposal would immediately help those homeowners, as they'd save on their monthly mortgage payment, and it could help the broader economy because homeowners could take the savings and spend it, spurring growth. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Related News: A stimulus idea that doesn't need 60 votes

08/18/2010 - Winning the Loan-Modification Lottery, Part I - Whether a distressed borrower can get a truly effective loan "mod," the kind that cuts payments sharply and reduces the principal to a realistic level-depends heavily on who ends up owning and servicing the loan. - www.wsj.com
Related News: Winning the Loan-Modification Lottery, Part II

08/18/2010 - 'Vultures' Investors Save Troubled Homeowners - As the nation struggles with the worst foreclosure crisis since the 1930s, Mr. Ranieri's investment fund and others like it are emerging as the best hope for the roughly seven million U.S. households behind on their mortgage payments. - www.wsj.com

08/17/2010 - Housing Starts Up in July, Permits at 14-Month Low - U.S. housing starts rose but to a much weaker rate than expected in July, while permits for future home construction fell to their lowest level in more than a year, according to a government report on Tuesday that pointed to a weak housing market. - www.foxbusiness.com

08/16/2010 - Fed's New Mortgage Rules Crack Down On Predatory Lenders - The central bank said Monday the new rules, which go into effect next April, will bar lenders from steering borrowers into loans that are not in their interest solely because they can receive inflated fees. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/16/2010 - Economist Who Predicted First Crisis Sees 40% Chance Of Another Recession - 11 Indicators Of A Double Dip Recession - A growing and vocal minority of economists believes that there will be a double dip recession primarily because of the intransigence of high unemployment and the rapidly faltering housing market. - www.247wallst.com

08/16/2010 - Loan modification group to offer its own mortgages - NACA - In addition to helping homeowners modify their loans, the Neighborhood Assistance Corp. of America will offer its own low-interest mortgages during its Aug. 27-30 West Palm Beach event. The no-money-down, zero-closing-costs loans are meant for low- to moderate-income families, but come with caveats and application requirements that go beyond traditional mortgages. On Friday, the group's website was advertising a 4 percent, 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. - www.miamiherald.com

08/16/2010 - Why Older Americans Walk Away From Mortgages - Mortgage debt among older American homeowners like Carpenter rose during the years when the housing bubble was inflating - reversing the long-standing trend of declining debt as retirement approached. At the same time, older homeowners are sinking underwater on those mortgages at above-average rates. Last year, up to 22 percent of homeowners age 55 to 64 would have had to bring cash to a closing on the sale of a primary residence - www.foxbusiness.com

08/16/2010 - The wasted 4.44% mortgage rate - Like it is in so many parts of today's sideways economy, relief is out of reach. Stimulus dollars are everywhere, but somehow never where they're needed most. A 30-year fixed-rate mortgage in the week ending Thursday dropped to 4.44% from 4.49%. the Mortgage Bankers Association reported last week that 78.1% of all mortgage applications fell under the refinance category, up from 58.7% in April. - www.cnn.com

08/15/2010 - Borrowers Refusing To Pay Back Billions In Bubble-Era Home Equity Loans - Lenders say they are trying to recover some of that money but their success has been limited, in part because so many borrowers threaten bankruptcy and because the value of the homes, the collateral backing the loans, has often disappeared. - www.nytimes.com

08/15/2010 - Luxury Condo Mortgages Now Boast Government-Backing - The Federal Housing Administration agreed in March to insure mortgages for apartments at the 98-unit Gramercy Park development, known as Tempo. That enables buyers to make a down payment of as little as 3.5 percent in a building where apartments are listed at $820,000 to $3 million. - www.bloomberg.com

08/15/2010 - Hindenburg Omen Reportedly Returns. Will Doom Follow? - The Omen, named after the famous German airship in 1937 that crashed in Lakehurst, N.J., is a technical indicator that foreshadows not just a bear market but a stock-market crash. Its creator, a blind mathematician named Jim Miekka, said his indicator is now predicting a market meltdown in September. - www.investmentadvisor.com

08/15/2010 - Meet The Politician Who Wants To Level The Playing Field For Homeowners - Representative Brad Mille - He is worth getting to know, not only because of his deep concern about the foreclosure epidemic, but also because he has made a compelling recommendation to level an exceedingly tilted playing field in mortgage finance. - www.nytimes.com

08/14/2010 - Florida investigating 'bogus' foreclosure records - Attorney General looking at Fidelity National Financial and Lender Processing Services. The probe deals with a Lender Processing subsidiary that "seems to be creating and manufacturing 'bogus assignments' of mortgage," according to a synopsis the Attorney General's Office posted on its website. - www.jacksonville.com

08/12/2010 - $3 billion more for jobless homeowners - The Obama administration is making $3 billion in additional funds available to help troubled homeowners avoid foreclosure. - www.cnn.com

08/12/2010 - The Good And The Bad In July's Foreclosure Report - NPR - On one side, the number of homes taken back by banks reached the second-highest monthly total since the start of the foreclosure crisis - more than 90,000 homes repossessed in just one month. But on the other side, the number of homes in the early stages of foreclosure is down - more than 30 percent from the peak early last year. - www.NPR.org

08/07/2010 - 20% of mortgages are underwater - At 21.5% for the third quarter, it is a small improvement over the previous quarter, when 23.3% of loans were underwater, according to real estate website Zillow.com. - www.cnn.com

08/07/2010 - The Worrying Numbers Behind Underwater Homeowners - The bad news: Those 11.2 million loans make up roughly 24% of all U.S. mortgages. Add the 2.3 million borrowers who are close to slipping underwater (those with less than 5% equity), and the numbers rise to 13.5 million -- 28% of mortgages. - www.dailyfinance.com

08/06/2010 - The Return of the $1,000 Down Mortgage - Fannie Mae and State Housing Agencies Are Offering Little-Money-Down Mortgages. The pilot program is called "Affordable Advantage," and it has now been adopted by three states - Massachusetts, Wisconsin and Idaho. (Other states, such as Pennsylvania, California and Colorado, have similar state programs.) - www.washingtonindependent.com

08/06/2010 - Higher Government Mortgage Fees Approved By Senate - The Senate late Wednesday unanimously approved legislation giving the FHA the power to hike monthly premiums it charges to consumers. The measure now goes to President Barack Obama, who is expected to sign it. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/06/2010 - An August Surprise from Obama? - Main Street may be about to get its own gigantic bailout. Rumors are running wild from Washington to Wall Street that the Obama administration is about to order government-controlled lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive a portion of the mortgage debt of millions of Americans who owe more than what their homes are worth - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/06/2010 - Fannie Mae: Home Prices To Decline Into Next Year - "We expect that home prices on a national basis will decline slightly in 2010 and into 2011 before stabilizing, and that the peak-to-trough home price decline on a national basis will range between 18 percent and 25 percent," the bailed-out behemoth said in its filing. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/05/2010 - Ex-Goldman Sachs Employee Compares Working At Bank To Being A 'Fluffer' On A 'Porn Set' - Wall Street is even simpler than religion. Your entire worth as a human is defined by one number: the compensation number your boss tells you at the end of the year. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/05/2010 - Record Number of Americans Receiving Food Stamp Benefits - The number of Americans receiving federal aid through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program , commonly known as food stamps, soared to a record 40.8 million in May, - www.foxnews.com

08/05/2010 - Vulture investors: They're back - and making a bundle - These investors are known to many as vultures because they swoop in and buy "distressed properties" -- foreclosures and short sales -- cheap. Places like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Miami are popular because home prices there have dropped as much as 70%. - www.cnn.com

08/04/2010 - EXTEND AND PRETEND: The Obama Administration's Failed Foreclosure Program - When President Obama took office, it took an average of 319 days to complete a foreclosure. Now it takes 461 days. Extending the process by which homes enter foreclosure allows banks to continue carrying the loans on their books at full value, delaying loss recognition. That allows unhealthy banks to appear healthy, staving off costly bank failures. - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: PAGE-2, PAGE-3

08/04/2010 - EXCLUSIVE FRAUD: Fannie and Freddie's Foreclosure Barons - It involved something called an "assignment of mortgage," the document that certifies who owns the property and is thus entitled to foreclose on it. Especially these days, the assignment is key evidence in a foreclosure case: - www.motherjones.com
Read More: PAGE-2, PAGE-3

08/03/2010 - Hitting the reset button on US mortgages - Now that the US Treasury's Hamp programme is widely recognised as a failure, attention is turning to new efforts to reinvigorate the lagging American housing market. To wit, recent whispers that the US government's latest mortgage modification effort will take the shape of a mass refinancing. - www.ft.com
Read More: Bruce Krasting - On the Mega ReFi Rumour

08/03/2010 - New Fannie Mae website helps troubled borrowers with next step - We hear all the time from borrowers trying to avoid foreclosure. Now mortgage giant Fannie Mae has launched a website for distressed homeowners who need help figuring out what to do next.. - www.sun-sentinel.com
Read More: Knowyouroptions.com,

08/03/2010 - Superman Saves Family From Foreclosure - Fishler took the copy to Comic-con last week for a valuation. It received a "Very Good" status with 5/10 points, ABC News reports. It is expected to fetch at least $250,000 through an auction on ComicConnect's website on August 27th. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/03/2010 - Countrywide Settlement: $600 Million To Settle Lawsuits Over Subprime Loans - The settlement would end several class-action lawsuits that claimed Countrywide concealed mounting risks as it loosened its standards for loans during the housing boom.. - www.huffingtonpost.com

08/02/2010 - Condos for less than the cost of a new Corolla car - 8 areas - Home prices are plunging, and some of the best bargains are condos. Here are 8 that can be purchased for less than the cost of a new Prius. - www.cnn.com

07/30/2010 - The crisis of middle-class America - Mention middle-class America and most foreigners envision something timeless and manicured, from The Brady Bunch, say, or Desperate Housewives in which teenagers drive to school in sports cars and the girls are always cheerleading. This might approximate how some in the top 10 per cent live. - www.ft.com

07/30/2010 - Dwindling Retirement Savings 'Undiscussed Explosive Bomb' Of Recession - "I pay my bills with what is left of the savings I accumulated by being frugal all my life, but I'm going through that pretty fast," he said. "I have tapped my IRA, and the result of that is I will be heavily taxed on it next April - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/28/2010 - Welcome To Las Vegas: Bank Owned - So many homes in Las Vegas have been foreclosed upon that banks rarely bother to hang a "For Sale" sign on the front lawn anymore. Instead, visitors identify bank-owned properties by the brown grass and the 8.5 x 11-inch sheet of paper taped to the front door or the garage. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/28/2010 - Rise of the renting class - Massive government programs supporting ownership still exist today, but record home foreclosures and spiraling prices have forced a redefinition of the American Dream -- one that includes renting. - www.cnn.com

07/28/2010 - Wall Street 1, Cleveland 0: City can't sue banks for bad loans - On Tuesday, a panel of federal judges rejected the city's appeal to pursue a lawsuit that charged nearly two dozen top banks with creating a "public nuisance" by dealing in bad loans. Rather, they suggested that at least part of the blame lay with the companies that sold the mortgages as well as the individuals who signed up for the loans. - www.cnn.com

07/27/2010 - Apartment Rentals Surge in U.S. on Home Foreclosures, Job Gains - The number of occupied apartments increased by 215,000 in the 64 largest U.S. markets in the first half, according to MPF Research. That's almost double the units added in all of 2009 and the most since the firm began tracking the data in 1992. The vacancy rate declined to 6.6 percent last month from 8.2 percent in December. - www.bloomberg.com

07/27/2010 - The Probability Of A Double-Dip Recession Is 'More Than 50 Percent,' Says Yale's Shiller - Robert Shiller, professor of economics at Yale University and co-developer of Standard and Poor's S&P/Case-Shiller home price indexes, told Reuters Insider he does not know where home prices may be headed, but believes the economy may be on a precarious path. - www.reuters.com

07/27/2010 - White House wants a housing fix - Efforts to find a fix for America's $5 trillion housing problem are creeping forward. The White House said Tuesday it will hold a conference next month to lay out the options for repairing the nation's broken-down housing-finance institutions. - www.cnn.com

07/27/2010 - Home ownership falls to lowest level in 11 years - The Census Bureau said the home ownership rate fell to 66.9% in the second quarter of 2010, down half a percentage point from the previous year. The home ownership rate was 67.1% in the first quarter of the year. - www.cnn.com

07/21/2010 - Thinking Of Foreclosure? It Could Cost Your Neighbors Serious Money - Foreclosures Reduce A Home's Value By 27%, MIT Study Finds - John Y. Campbell and Stefano Giglio say that foreclosed houses sell at such low prices "both because they may have been physically damaged during the foreclosure process, and because financial institutions have an incentive to sell them quickly." - www.huffingtonpost.com
Read More: 1) Forced Sales & House Prices, 2) MIT Study

07/21/2010 - Wall Streeters pulled back, but foreclosures swamp Nantucket natives - The tight financing explains part of the problem of foreclosures, a word that hasn't been whispered on Nantucket since the savings and loan system blew up in the early 1990s. In the first six months of 2010 foreclosures accounted for 20 of 163 sales -- twice the 2009 rate. - www.cnn.com

07/21/2010 - Bailout Watchdog Calls Mortgage Programs a Bust - The homeownership program aims to reduce mortgage payments for millions of homeowners who can't afford their monthly bills. Recent data suggest it has helped about 400,000 households avoid foreclosure. About 530,000 have fallen out of the program. - www.foxnews.com

07/21/2010 - Bankruptcy can save your house from foreclosure - Bankruptcy can bring foreclosure proceedings to a halt, end harassment from debt collectors, and give borrowers time to make up missed payments and reorganize their finances. In some cases, bankruptcy can also help mortgage borrowers save their homes permanently. - www.cnn.com

07/20/2010 - 400,000 get foreclosure help but many don't qualify for Obama's foreclosure prevention - More delinquent homeowners learned last month that they don't qualify for foreclosure help in the Obama administration's program, according to federal data released Tuesday. Some 91,118 people in trial modifications were canceled in June, bringing the total to 520,814 since the program began in the spring of 2009 - www.cnn.com

07/19/2010 - Wall Streeters pulled back, but foreclosures swamp Nantucket natives - The tight financing explains part of the problem of foreclosures, a word that hasn't been whispered on Nantucket since the savings and loan system blew up in the early 1990s. In the first six months of 2010 foreclosures accounted for 20 of 163 sales -- twice the 2009 rate. - www.cnn.com

07/15/2010 - 1 MILLION Americans Expected To Lose Homes In 2010 - 'Unprecedented' Foreclosures About Ten Times Historical Rate - Nearly 528,000 homes were taken over by lenders in the first six months of the year, a rate that is on track to eclipse the more than 900,000 homes repossessed in 2009, according to data released Thursday by RealtyTrac Inc., a foreclosure listing service. - www.huffingtonpost.com

07/15/2010 - Foreclosures fall 5% - Unfortunately, the pace of bank repossessions quickened, with nearly 270,000 homes lost to foreclosure during April, May and June, a 5% increase over the three winter months. - www.cnn.com