Headline News Archive

2008

July

09

• Fed to curb shady home-lending practices. The Federal Reserve will issue new rules next week aimed at protecting future homebuyers from dubious lending practices, its most sweeping response to a housing

• Foreclosures' financial toll on kids. In many ways, Shelby Morrow is a typical 16-year-old. She likes hanging out with her friends, dreams of getting her own car and enjoys writing

06

• Mortgage brokers as naysayers in NY. New York's borrowers could notice a different tone in their discussions with mortgage brokers in coming months, as brokers adjust to a new state law

• You can raise credit scores. If you can improve your credit scores, you will probably spend less money, perhaps hundreds or thousands of dollars less each year. Here is how

• A lesson on credit cards. Recently, a subcommittee of the House Committee on Financial Services held a hearing on the marketing tactics companies use to pitch credit cards to college

• Home equity door slams shut. Some 122,000 borrowers with Countrywide home-equity lines of credit, or HELOCs, received letters in January informing them that they could no longer withdraw funds from their

• Dividends start to crumble. The credit crisis and economic slowdown have become so grave that many companies are chopping dividend payments to their shareholders. Financial institutions, reeling from the

05

• Help for homeowners hangs in the balance. Congress left town for the July 4 recess with a half-baked cake in its legislative oven -- one that has huge potential significance for the housing

03

• Home equity credit line delinquencies hit high. The troubled economy is leaving consumers with increasingly tough decisions about which debts to pay first, and in some cases, which to pay at all.

01

• Wachovia quits offering risky mortgage option. Wachovia said it will quit offering a mortgage payment option that allows borrowers to pay less each month than the bank charges in interest. The

June

30

• Mortgage meltdown was no accident. George Mitchell's wife, Lillian, took her last breath in the house she loved, on New Year's Day 2006. "Right there in that spot," says George, 77, nodding

• Northeast braces for home heating oil increases. New Englanders struggling this summer to pay gas prices topping $4 a gallon should brace for more bad news — home heating oil costs next winter are

28

• Keep watch on your credit report—free. If you're thinking about buying a home or refinancing a mortgage, you may want to avail yourself of a forthcoming free service that could help

26

• Beware, your credit score may have fallen. Just as Americans grow more reliant on credit cards to help pay monthly bills, they're being hit with a one-two punch: Card companies are reducing

• Homeowners fight for their mortgage rights. Beset by financial problems in 2002, Eunice Anderson fell months behind in the mortgage payments on her four-bedroom ranch in Redford Township, Mich., near Detroit. Anderson, 48,

• Vital part of housing bill Is brainchild of banks. A key provision of the housing bill now awaiting action in the Senate -- and widely touted as offering a lifeline to distressed homeowners --

• Delinquencies rise at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac. In a sign of continuing trouble in the housing market, mortgage delinquency rates doubled over a 12-month period at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the

24

• Love the home you're stuck with. When prices were soaring, credit was flowing and selling was as easy as jamming a FOR SALE sign into your front lawn, the simplest way

23

• Cities fight foreclosures with unusual tactics. Just two months ago, Aaron Brokenbough had no clout and little say when lenders moved to foreclose on his home. His Philadelphia row house was

21

• FHA targets downpayment 'gift' programs. What's wrong with down-payment "gift" programs in which all or most of a home buyer's equity stake comes from the seller, funneled through a third

20

• Arrestan cientos por fraude inmobiliario. Una investigación federal de tres meses concluyó jueves con el arresto de unos 400 sospechosos vinculados con el negocio inmobiliario, en una ofensiva contra el

19

• D.C. foreclosures soar past most. The Washington region now has one of the fastest-growing foreclosure rates in the nation, as 15,613 homes went into foreclosure during the one-year period ending in

17

• Real estate agents court Gen Y. Jacky Teplitzky used to turn to all the time-tested tools to drum up business for her New York-based real estate firm, Prudential Douglas Elliman. Billboards.

• Mortgage lenders pledge more help. Major mortgage lenders have agreed to streamline and speed up the process for assisting distressed homeowners, according to new guidelines set to be released today.

• La economía aprieta a los hispanos. La delicada situación económica de Estados Unidos está afectando a más del 80 por ciento de los hispanos mayores de 45 años, incluso