Application activity for mortgages fell sharply last week, dropping as rates on adjustable rate mortgages appear to have soared. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported Wednesday that its composite index of mortgage loan application volume was 652.5 for the week ending November 23, 2007 — a decrease of 4.3 percent on a seasonally- and holiday-adjusted basis [...]

Existing home sales fell 1.2 percent to a record low of of 4.97 million unit-pace in October, according to a report from the National Association of Realtors that underscores how difficult the current housing market has become. In addition to sales volume, median existing-home prices fell 5.1 percent on a yearly basis to $207,800, the [...]

Servicing mortgages is a low margin business, mostly — mortgage servicing rights are certainly becoming more valuable as a hedge these days, as Countrywide noted in a presentation at the FBR Investor Conference yesterday, but not valuable enough to offset portfolio losses elsewhere for a large lender/servicer conglomerate. I bring this up because Countrywide’s servicing operations [...]

A report released today by the U.S. Conference of Mayors casts a gloomy picture for 2008 and the nation’s housing markets, saying that increasing foreclosures in key metropolitan areas across the United states will drive economic losses equaling $166 billion. The report projects that the foreclosure crisis will result in 524,000 fewer jobs being created [...]

Wells Fargo & Company said today that it will take a charge of $1.4 billion cover losses in its mortgage portfolio, while further tightening its underwriting standards for home equity lending. The bank said in a press statement that it will no longer originate home equity loans through wholesalers where the CLTV (combined loan-to-value) is [...]

Freddie Mac said late Tuesday that it will cut its common dividend by 50 percent, to $0.25 per share, while it will sell $6 billion in preferred stock as part of a move to raise capital amid expected mortgage-related losses in the fourth quarter. Today’s move was largely anticipated. The GSE reported a $2 billion loss [...]

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight this morning confirmed that 2008 conforming loan limits will remain unchanged at $417,000 for single-unit properties in most of the nation (some areas, including Hawaii, are designated as “high cost” and have higher limits). The conforming level has not changed in three years, reflecting sustained price declines at [...]

An index of national housing prices dropped the most in over two decades during the third quarter, fresh evidence that the nation’s housing slump is likely far from over. The S&P/Case-Shiller indices, release this morning, registered a 1.7 percent decline nationally during the third quarter of 2007 — the largest quarterly drop in the 21 [...]

There has been quite a brouhaha made in the media out of a recent ruling by a federal judge in Ohio — on October 31, Judge Christopher A. Boyko of Federal District Court in Cleveland dismissed 14 foreclosure cases involving Deutsche Bank as trustee. Other similar rulings have since followed suit, all on the grounds [...]

Fieldstone Mortgage Company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late on Friday, according to numerous media reports on Monday. From Reuters: “Due to the wide-ranging economic downturn in the credit markets, and the severe financial pressures facing the debtor, the debtor was unsuccessful in its efforts to resolve its liquidity crisis outside the bankruptcy forum,” lawyers [...]