Headline News Archive

2009

October

17

• Beware fast credit fixes. With Americans' credit scores plunging amid record numbers of mortgage and credit card delinquencies, companies that promise to eliminate negative information in credit bureaus' files

16

• Easy steps can cut winter heating bills. Natural gas and heating oil prices rose again Thursday, continuing a recent upward tick. Even so, the cost of heating your house, apartment or condo

15

• Foreclosures: 'Worst three months of all time'. Despite concerted government-led and lender-supported efforts to prevent foreclosures, the number of filings hit a record high in the third quarter, according to a report

12

• A scramble to modify loans. Plano, Tex. - Bank of America employees are reminded every day of how far they still have to go. Just outside the elevators of their

11

• Fannie and Freddie sell foreclosed homes. Home buyers are not accustomed to getting much help with their mortgage financing; generally, they’re happy just to get a loan closed. At least

10

• A mortgage loan form to take seriously. You might assume it's just another boring-looking piece of the paper blitz you're hit with when applying for a home loan. But given the new

• Report criticizes mortgage program. A federal program that has cut mortgage payments for more than 500,000 homeowners since spring is falling well short of what's needed to fix the nation's

06

• Lawyers scarce for poor facing foreclosure. The nation's foreclosure crisis has swamped lawyers for the poor, leaving thousands of low-income homeowners across the country without legal assistance that could save their

05

• Reporting overlooked economic troubles of ordinary people. A study to be released Monday of financial news coverage this year found that government, Wall Street and a small handful of story lines got

• Heating aid could fall short of needs. Record numbers of low-income people and senior citizens who can't afford to heat their homes are applying for help, say some local agencies that distribute

03

• Reverse mortgages feel the squeeze. Declining home values have put a serious squeeze on one of the mortgage market's most popular and fastest-growing financing concepts: the Federal Housing Administration's reverse

September

27

• New mortgage rules Oct. 1. States have taken the lead in adopting laws to protect consumers from some of the problem loans that helped trigger the home foreclosure crisis, but

• The mortgage machine backfires. With the mortgage bust approaching Year Three, it is increasingly up to the nation’s courts to examine the dubious practices that guided the mania.

• Could your financial life survive a disaster?. Every natural disaster sears us with the same images: Forlorn families sifting through ashes for possessions. And business owners peeling open the charred remnants of

• Fed stayed on sidelines in subprime mortgage fallout. The visits had a ritual quality. Three times a year, a coalition of Chicago community groups met with the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators

26

• Hotel too pricey? Try a home swap. When the concept of home-swapping was portrayed in 2006 by Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet in the movie "The Holiday," it seemed fairly ambitious: Cross continents

• New life for first time buyer credit?. Will Congress extend the wildly popular $8,000 home-buyer tax credit beyond its Nov. 30 expiration date? That's a question generating huge pressure on Capitol Hill from would-be

24

• Mortgage modification event in L.A.. More than 50,000 homeowners are expected to begin streaming through the Los Angeles Convention Center today, hoping for a hand in restructuring their mortgages or avoiding

• Consumer watchdog's powers scaled back. Banks could appeal decisions by a new watchdog agency under a scaled-back version of an Obama administration plan to protect consumers from financial abuses. The

22

• Lenders clamp down, credit scores take a hit. Long after the economy recovers, millions of Americans will be left with a grim legacy of the recession: damaged credit scores, the three-digit ratings that

20

• Poof: How some home loans transform. It could be said — with a bit of imagination — that mortgage-backed securities, a prime trigger of last year’s financial meltdown, are to this age

19

• Good credit scores, deadbeat choices. Who is more likely to walk away from a house and a mortgage - a person with super-prime credit scores or someone with lower scores?

15

• Mortgage modifications make things worse for some. Tens of thousands of financially strapped homeowners who have asked lenders to lower their mortgage payments are instead winding up with higher monthly payments and

14

• Sinking in a sea of debt?. If your credit card's monthly minimum payment is starting to look more like your old balance or you're not answering the phone for fear of

• Foreclosures force condos into action. Condo associations, developers and lenders across the nation are trying innovative tactics to save themselves from financial disaster amid the foreclosure crisis. The growing number