Ironies abound in the current mortgage mess/financial crisis. One of the most poignant, from my perspective – that’s one with over 20 years in MBS/ABS research -- is the fact that, by abandoning the Great Depression as the worst-case benchmark and shifting to models based on contemporary mortgage performance, the ratings companies helped create the current house price crash and credit squeezes that are routinely compared to the Great Depression.
So, for history buffs, I am going to...
No, not that Paulson. We're talking about John Paulson, the hedge fund manager at Paulson & Co. that, until last year, was a middle of the pack fund manager.
No more.
Housing Wire was among the first to take notice of Paulson's market positions in the middle of last year, when he started a very public row with Bear Stearns over the issue of loan...
An interesting take from the editorialists over at the Washington Post argues Monday that one of the little-noticed provisions in the Senate's most recent housing proposal may actually encourage foreclosures.
We're referring, of course, to the $7,000 tax credit, payable over two years, to anyone who purchases a foreclosed home.
...
Regular HW readers probably know I got my start in the default side of the mortgage industry -- and I usually cringe when I see how non-financial media handle interviews with industry experts. But Luke Mullins over at US News hits one out of the park today with none other than Integrated Asset Services' own Ryan Tomazin.
The bottom line? Price mostly suck, but don't suck everywhere. It's...
I like Barry Ritholz at the Big Picture blog. I do. I think he's a bright guy. But he's proven time and time again that he can be out of his league when it comes to anything remotely resembling mortgage servicing. Doubly so when he bases his gotcha! moments on a flawed major media piece written by reporters that can't understand the difference between "dumping properties onto market" and a foreclosure sale.
His latest...
100 terabytes. That's a whole lot of data, any way you slice it.
So while it isn't exactly industry news, we noticed Thursday that Safeguard Properties, a huge player in the field services side of the default industry, had gotten pretty serious with their data storage technology. A press release from FalconStor Software, Inc. touted the property...
Jason Szep at Reuters tackles an issue that anyone in property preservation knows all too well -- copper thieves. In places like Detroit and Cleveland, it's often the case that the copper in the home ends up being worth more than the house itself.
And with the market for nonferrous metals at an all-time high, the industry faces an interesting problem: board up a house, and its essentially open season to be gutted and have its metal parts shipped off to China.
...
A little April fool's day humor (H/T, Calculated Risk):
Of course, we think the bombshell was their...
The financial press hasn't yet let go of the Bear Stearns meme, and most of what we read in this area tends to make our eyes roll into the back of our heads -- but this piece over at Minyanville does a good job making a case for why the i-banks aren't out of the woods yet over this mortgage thing.
Let's play name the bank:
Without naming names quite yet, what...
After hammering lenders for making loans to minorities that many consumer advocates say should never have been made, now some industry groups are claiming that lenders aren't lending enough to minorities living in the hardest-hit local housing markets.
Saying that lender-enacted policies to limit lending activity in the hardest-hit housing markets is "disproportionately affecting minority borrowers," three groups representing Asian, Black and Hispanic real estate...
