None other than Barclays Capital warned Tuesday that roughly half of all subprime and Alt-A borrowers in the U.S. could soon owe more than their house is worth, or have extremely minimal equity left — a problem that is imperiling more homeowners in the States than mortgage rate resets, which have received far greater press [...]

We’re probably not going to make a lot of friends on the consumer side with this, but more than a few analysts have asked us here at HW when we’re going to take up the issue of “predatory borrowing,” since the cards have pretty much been dealt on predatory servicing and predatory lending. How about now? An [...]

MarketWatch covers the trials and trevails of HBOS, the UK’s largest mortgage lender: HBOS … said Tuesday that it plans to raise 4 billion pounds ($7.95 billion) through the sale of stock to existing shareholders as it battles against rising write-downs and tighter lending margins. The announcement made HBOS the second major U.K. bank to announce a [...]

Mortgage delinquencies will get worse before they get better, with more than 4 percent of mortgages 60+ days in arrears by the end of this year, according to analysis by TransUnion’s financial services group. Less than 3 percent of mortgages were 60+ days delinquent to start 2008. TransUnion’s quarterly analysis found that average mortgage debt per [...]

MarketWatch blurbs: Japanese banks and brokerages are expected to post a combined loss of more than 1 trillion yen ($9.6 billion) in investments tied to the U.S. mortgage market in the recently-ended fiscal year, according to a Japanese media report Tuesday. Japanese banks, which are due to release their fiscal 2007 earnings in the first half [...]

If anyone needed proof that default servicing is now headed towards the spotlight, look no further than yesterday’s announcement by the Senate Judiciary Committee that it will hold a session focusing on recent high-profile bankruptcy management missteps. The Judiciary Committee’s Subcommitree on Administrative Oversight and the Courts will hold a hearing titled “Policing Lenders and [...]

President Bush took a hard line on Tuesday in his administration’s latest push for housing reform, saying that key Congressional leaders had chosen to politicize economic issues, including housing, rather than working on what he called “critical legislation.” In remarks made at a press conference in the White House’s Rose Garden, the President said that [...]

Market commentary Tuesday by Bill Gross over at PIMCO argues that home prices are what matters most going forward, and backs a proposal by Congressional Democrats that would serve to prop up home prices under logic that says further price declines must be avoided: The better alternative is to initiate a limited mark-to-market write-down of private [...]

Ellie Mae, a software and services provider for the mortgage industry, said Monday that it had donated its professional services to Acorn Housing, a national non-profit organization providing free housing counseling to low and moderate income homebuyers. Acorn also provides foreclosure prevention services to assist homeowners who are currently in default on their mortgages to [...]

Tampa, Florida-based Mortgage Contracting Services, a provider of property preservation and inspection services for the mortgage industry, touted first quarter growth tied to technology enhancements and improved vendor management. MCS developed and deployed MCS360 during Q1, a platform that allows real-time transfer of information between MCS, its vendor network and its clients. MCS360 provides instant notification [...]