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...
In the early 1930s, America was astounded and appalled by renowned criminals Bonne Parker and Clyde Barrow. The two out-laws were infamous for their bank robberies during the Great Depression.
Fast forward almost a century, and banks have to worry a lot less about modern Bonnie and Clydes. Instead, their greatest looming threats have gone underground into the vast depths of the Internet and cyberspace.
What would Bonnie and Clyde have to say about that I wonder?
...
The latest CoreLogic home price index jumped a whopping 10.5% nationally, but analysts say values are still far away from creating a housing bubble.
This change represents the biggest year-over-year increase since March 2006 and the 13th consecutive monthly increase in home prices nationally, CoreLogic ($23.68 -0.09%) said in a...
This week at the Mortgage Bankers Association National Secondary conference there was a panel entitled "The Role of Rating Agencies and the Re-emergence of the Private Label RMBS Market".
As I sat down to listen to the discussion I was reminded of what Albert Einstein has said "insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results".
Will the RMBS investment community do the same thing again and rely on ratings to...
It seems government officials do have a plan to fix homeowners in trouble, but you would never know it since they are piecemealing the initiative together one silent step at a time.
The big news this week was President Obama’s pick of Rep. Mel Watt, D-N.C., to replace Ed DeMarco as FHFA director.
It’s no secret that Rep. Watt favors principal reductions, an issue that...
With housing starts on the rise, new homes are popping up all over the country. But many homebuyers prefer older homes that are often considered a piece of local history.
Trulia ($30.77 0.24%...
In certain housing markets, it seems homes are selling like hot cakes. Buyers in California are feeling the heat more than anyone, with four of the top five fastest-moving housing markets in The Golden State.
Orange County, San Diego, Sacramento and Los Angeles topped the list, with Las Vegas coming in at no. 5, according to data from ZipRealty.
In Orange County, the median days homes spent on the market dropped from...
Lender Processing Services is in the middle of its three-part video series titled "The State of the Housing Union," hosted by Jonathon Weiner, vice president of research and development at LPS.
In the first video, Weiner recapped the events that led to the mortgage and finance housing bubble. The VP notes that the 13% annual appreciation in 2004 and 2005 coupled with rising mortgage rates in the same time period hurt...
