Every real estate agent has one – a homeowner living next to a listed property who has bad taste and ends up driving down curbside appeal and costing agents potential buyers.
But it's unlikely any of the bad neighbors surrounding your listings have anything on Grammy-winner Chris Brown, who painted an ugly mural of goblins alongside a wall lining his Hollywood Hills Home,...
Most housing publications – especially those focused on mortgage finance – have been covering the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems issue for well over two years.
But the mainstream media – and now Jon Stewart – have just discovered MERS, the mortgage electronic registry created back in the 1990s to record mass transfers of mortgage assignments during...
The first quarter earnings season is wrapping up and the impact on the S&P 500 versus the FTSE stock exchanges is pretty astounding.
Ken Elgarten of Société Générale said in a commentary on the US credit environment: "Earnings season winding down, with more than 90% of the S&P 500 companies reporting Q1 results with roughly 75% of those either meeting or beating forecasts."
It bodes well for the US: "Overall, we anticipate solid...
The New York Metropolitan Statistical Area continues to grow, but housing production outpaced household growth in the past decade, creating a market imbalance, the Obama administration concluded in a Friday report.
The same study claims an influx of subprime lending during the ten-year period fueled the problem.
During the 10-year span, net annual housing unit growth reached 0.6% in the New York MSA, far greater than the corresponding population and...
When New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman pounced on Wells Fargo and Bank of America for allegedly violating terms of the $25 billion national mortgage servicing settlement, it became clear the mortgage finance system is perennially buried in quicksand – and no one is committed to its long-term rescue.
Every...
A single Bank of America shareholder suggested that it might not be such a bad idea for the bank to put together an independent review system for its mortgage servicing operations.
It's no surprise that Josh Zinner would do so at the company's annual shareholders meeting.
After all, he is with the community advocacy group Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project.
"As a...
Standard & Poor’s/Case Shiller housing index jumped 9.3% in February—the most in seven years—but before you get too excited, there are a few key points to be mindful of when it comes to the housing market.
On Friday, May 10th, the FOX Business Network will host a day-long special on the U.S. housing market and its prospects...
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night applied its unique brand of comical genius to a public/private sector takedown of certain elements of the national foreclosure settlement.
In true fashion, Stewart and his team didn't pull any punches. The Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems is "is like a key party, but instead of f**king your wife, they lose track of the deed to your house," Stewart said.
Ouch.
But he saved the real vitriol for the...
James Hagerty of the Wall Street Journal hosted a session on the future of America’s mortgage market this week at the MBA Secondary Conference in New York.
The title of the session and the majority of the discussion assumes in some way that the mortgage market needs to be different than it is today. This leads me to wonder: Does the mortgage market need to be fixed and if so what still needs to be fixed?
We are all well aware of the extent to which GSEs...
The housing market went through a whirlwind of a transformation after it crashed in 2008.
The subprime market went too far and too many borrowers qualified for inflated or risky mortgages. But times have changed and the housing market is getting back into shape.
The only problem is now that housing is under control, America is starting to focus on a new problem that has been gaining traction—student debt.
Education debt is out of control, and young adults are finishing...
