Archive for April, 2010
The fallout of the mortgage boom and bust appears to have had little affect on borrower mentality when it comes to buying a home, with US borrowers spend more time researching automotive purchases and travel options than mortgages, based on a survey by online mortgage marketplace Zillow.
The survey — conducted on more than 2,700 adults by market research firm Harris Interactive — found that 31% of Americans spend less than two hours researching their home loan. Two hours represents the average amount of time spent researching a vacation or computer purchase, or half the amount of time spent researching a new car, Zillow said.
The average home loan costs five times more than the average car and 80 times more than the average vacation, the company found:
Survey respondents indicate they are spending no more time researching a mortgage today than they did in 2008. Borrowers who took out a mortgage in the last five years received fewer quotes — an average three versus four — than in 2008.
"Starting from our first survey two years ago, I’ve been surprised that people spend more time shopping for cars and televisions than they do researching mortgages," said Zillow chief economist Stan Humphries, in an e-mailed statement. "I’m further surprised that they spend no more time shopping for mortgages now than they did two years ago, even in the midst of an unprecedented foreclosure crisis."
Humphries added: "People spend countless hours shopping for the perfect home, yet few realize that small differences in the interest rate or discount points can add tens of thousands of dollars to the overall cost of the home."
Write to Diana Golobay.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s thrashing in Washington left many employees angry, some discouraged and others worried their email and other internal documents could be snatched by regulators and investigators.
"Let me remind you that we should anticipate continued external focus on Goldman Sachs for the foreseeable future," Goldman Chairman and Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein said in a voice-mail message to employees after what he described as a "rigorous" hearing by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations on Tuesday.
"Please do not let this distract you from your daily responsibilities," he said.
Senator Tom Coburn had what he thought was irrefutable evidence.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. trader Josh Birnbaum had recommended betting against the stock of Bear Stearns Cos. in July 2007, just four months after his colleagues sold a $300m piece of “one [explicative deleted] deal” to hedge funds controlled by Bear Stearns, according to e-mails obtained by the Senate through a subpoena.
To Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican, that meant Goldman Sachs was wagering against its own clients using inside information — the poor quality of the deal it sold Bear Stearns.
Treasury secretary Timothy Geithner on Thursday slammed mortgage service companies for failing to do enough to help Americans avoid losing their homes and promised to crack down on shoddy practices.
"We do not believe servicers are doing enough to help homeowners — not doing enough to help them navigate the difficult and frightening process of avoiding foreclosure," Geithner said in prepared remarks for delivery to a Senate appropriations subcommittee.
He said Treasury was "troubled" by reports that servicers had done things like foreclose on homeowners who were potentially eligible for relief under the government's Home Affordable Mortgage Program, lost documents or claimed to have done so and even steered troubled homeowners away from available assistance.
When it comes to foreclosures, Salt Lake City is the worst of the worst.
The metro area had the largest percentage increase in foreclosure filings the past year among more than 50 communities hardest hit by the nation's foreclosure crisis, a new report shows.
Owners of 5,155 local properties received a foreclosure-related notice in the first quarter, 101 percent higher than the same period in 2009, according to RealtyTrac, a company that tracks foreclosures nationally. In the U.S., foreclosure filings rose only 16 percent. Many of the other metro areas with high levels of distressed properties actually saw their foreclosure rates fall from the super-high levels of last year.
Mortgage fraud is still on the rise and New York isn’t dodging the bullet in the crisis. New York came in as the second worst state for mortgage fraud in 2009, according to the Mortgage Asset Research Institute.
Mortgage fraud helped to build the housing crisis. Mortgage professionals would get loans for their consumers by doing such things as listing false income claims for borrowers and overstating a home’s appraised value.
New York came in as second worst in 2009 for mortgage fraud, with a mortgage fraud index reading of 217, up 14% since 2008.
