News

2007

September

14

• Trapped by the mortgage meltdown. Whether you're a home seller, owner or buyer, by this point you've got to be feeling a little rattled. The bad news about the housing market seems never ending: Foreclosures have more than doubled over

• Mortgage Lending Crisis and its Impact on Hispanic Community. The National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP) and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) released “Saving Homes, Saving Communities: Latino Brokers Speak Out on Hispanic Homeownership,” a joint report offering analysis on

13

• Mortgage denial rate inches up. Applicants for home mortgages were turned down for loans at a slightly higher rate in 2006 than the previous year, and significant disparities continued to exist between white and minority applicants, the government reported yesterday. In

• Prepayment penalties are a home loan trap. Homeowners whose loan rates are soaring may want to head for the exits. Many of them, though, will find no way out. If they sell their home or refinance, they will face a penalty of

• Minorías pagan más por crédito. De acuerdo con un informe publicado ayer por la Reserva Federal (Fed) de Estados Unidos, las minorías étnicas, entre ellas los latinos y afroamericanos, pagan precios más altos que los demás en

12

• Bill would raise Fannie, Freddie loan limit. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be allowed to buy mortgages of as much as $500,000 under an amendment to legislation that will likely be voted on next week, Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said yesterday. Frank,

• Mortgage brokers warned of deceptive ads. The Federal Trade Commission has warned more than 200 companies about "potentially deceptive" mortgage advertisements that could give borrowers false impressions of the cost of home loans. The agency said yesterday that ads in newspapers and

11

• BBB warns of shady foreclosure rescue firms. Kent and Kimberly Leser had a lousy weekend. They moved their three children and the last of their belongings out of their house and into the home of Kent’s parents. The Leser family lost

09

• Some mortgage originators skip state licensing. Concerned about mortgage fraud and predatory lending practices, many states have toughened their laws by requiring loan officers or originators to undergo extensive background checks and show proof of professional experience and training. Still, attracted

07

• Foreclosure proceedings set record. With a warning that the worst is yet to come, the Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday that lenders began foreclosure proceedings on a record number of homes this spring. The turmoil in the mortgage market

• Contagio de crisis ‘subprime’. Los propietarios de casas que están batallando para lidiar con los fuertes incrementos en sus pagos de hipoteca ajustable fueron golpeados con un número récord de noticias de embargos durante la primavera,

06

• FCC may ban cable exclusivity deals. ederal regulators appear set to crack down on cable companies that sign exclusive deals with apartment and condominium buildings, denying residents the fruits of emerging pay-TV competition. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin is recommending

• Home-equity loans dry up. When James Chou's credit card debt began to spin out of control a few years ago, he turned to a home-equity loan to pay it off. It proved to be a wise choice. Interest rates

• Se dispara el número de bancarrotas personales de consumidores. El total de bancarrotas llevadas a cabo en Estados Unidos durante el primer semestre de este año creció en el 48.23% respecto a igual período de 2006. Las bancarrotas de consumidores, es decir, aquellas que

05

• No more credit line sharing. A sea change in credit scoring could deflate your magic number: Fair Isaac, which calculates the widely used FICO score, recently announced that it would no longer recognize authorized-user accounts. Popular with families, the accounts

• Piden flexibilidad a prestamistas. La Reserva Federal y otras agencias reguladoras pidieron ayer a las empresas prestamistas que sean flexibles con sus acreedores, para evitar que éstos se declaren insolventes en el pago de sus hipotecas. Las entidades emitieron

02

• Lock out 'mortgage protection' pitches. The meltdown among sub-prime mortgage lenders shows a particularly ugly side of the housing market - the business of selling high-risk financial products to people who may not be that financially savvy. Here's another: the

• Tax hit could follow home loss. In a package of proposals aimed at easing foreclosure worries for homeowners having trouble making their mortgage payments, President Bush called last week on Congress to temporarily make some borrowers exempt from a little-known tax

• Not your parents' mortgage market. A generation ago, banks took on deposits and lent that money to homebuyers who took out 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages. That changed when Wall Street got involved in recent decades. Investment banks provided capital to mortgage

• Even low-risk borrower suffering. Now that homeowners can no longer easily use their homes as ATM machines, they are turning back to credit cards. The latest figures from the Federal Reserve show that consumers increased their amount of outstanding