MBA chairman-elect David G. Kittle testified earlier this week in front of the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law, and said that proposed changes to Federal bankruptcy law designed to help subprime borrowers would end up hurting all borrowers. In his testimony, Kittle told the committee that proposed legislation to reform the bankruptcy [...]

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly application survey found mortgage application activity on an upward swing last week, jumping 3.8 percent on a seasonally-adjusted basis for the week ending October 26, 2007 versus one week earlier. The Composite Index of all applications was up 19.5 percent compared to the same week one year ago, the trade [...]

U.S. housing prices continued their downward slide in August 2007, according to the latest S&P/Case-Shiller housing indices released this morning. The 10-city composite index — the original composite index before a 20-city composite was introduced earlier this year — fell 5 percent from year-ago levels and is at its lowest value since June 1991. A [...]

  A look at Tom Keene’s chart of the day, from Bloomberg; 11 Fed rate cuts in the offing? (Video will play without leaving HW, thanks to ClipSyndicate.) For more video, be sure to check out the HW Video Channel.

There is no other way to say it - things are getting ugly over on the ABX indices. Of the 20 issues traded, 17 settled at new all-time lows today. SEVENTEEN! I had to screencap the settlement chart for posterity’s sake: If you’re curious to see what’s taking place in CDS prices in even the most [...]

The National Association of Home Builders went out on a limb late last week and called a bottom for housing in 2008, with NAHB chief economist David Seiders saying he expects to see a “modest recovery” for most U.S. housing markets in 2008. From the press statement: With the housing sector facing a large backlog of unsold [...]

A new white paper from Deutsche Bank researchers, and published in the latest First American LoanPerformance MarketPulse report, shows just how painful underwriting at the fully-indexed rate will be for many subprime borrowers. More importantly, it underscores just how painful things are about to become for a swath of borrowers facing payment resets this quarter [...]

(October 29, 2007) — The American Bankers Association said this morning that it has renewed what it called a “unique alliance” with the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation, or Farmer Mac.

Way back in May, I’d wondered if allowing consumers the ability to pay their mortgages with a credit card was really a good idea — or if it was merely allowing troubled consumers the ability to rack up mountains of debt before heading into bankruptcy. I’d revisited the subject in September when a company called CardIt [...]

Numerous sources are reporting this morning that embattled Merrill Lynch CEO Stan O’Neal has decided to leave the Wall Street investment bank amid a firestorm of criticism for the firm’s third quarter results. From Bloomberg: For Merrill, a firm that over nine decades built a corporate culture that promoted from within and gently nudged its chiefs into [...]