Archive for February, 2010
Nineteen months ago, the recession took Bob Walker's job. Then, creditors lined up to take the three-bedroom hilltop home that the computer consultant shared with his wife, Stephanie, a playwright still looking for her first break.
Avoiding the stigma and financial fallout of foreclosure became an obsession for the Walkers. They talked to the banks, found multiple jobs, put their Silver Lake house on the market and tried to stitch together a plan to repay their debts. Finally, they turned to a short sale, chronicled in a popular blog: Love in the Time of Foreclosure.
"We really thought that, worst-case scenario, we will sell the house and break even," Stephanie Walker said. "But it didn't work. We went into great losses."
Forget the bar exam for lawyers or the SATs for high school seniors.
A mandatory nationwide licensing test for reverse-mortgage counselors is stumping veteran housing specialists, some of whom have been advising elderly homeowners in the Charleston [South Carolina] area about this type of loan for years.
Several months after the federal government made the exam more difficult, no Lowcountry housing counselor has been able to pass the exam. As a result, area homeowners in search of the required counseling are being referred to agencies in Columbia or Greenville.
Some Canadians in expensive real estate markets may have to change their game plans for buying a first home because of new rules announced this week by the federal government.
While the changes are unlikely to be a deterrent for most Canadians, it could make it harder for those on the fringes to qualify for mortgages, industry observers say.
"You'll have the odd marginal purchaser who might be affected by this but I think that these are reasonable ways to keep spending in check," says Dale Ripplinger, president of the Canadian Real Estate Association and a realtor in Regina.
Citigroup is getting a massive amount of love from the hedge fund community… along with Morningstar’s mutual fund manager of the decade Bruce Berkowitz. I wonder if the taxpayer will get a hand written thank you note from the speculator class (of which I am one!). On one side you have implicit taxpayer support and on the other you have a Federal Reserve which has thrown American savers under a bus so that our oligarchs – Citigroup front and center – can make money in their sleep by borrowing from the Fed at nearly zero and charging the American people any figure over and above 0.25% for their borrowings.
