Earlier today we published a contributed piece from an attorney on the front lines of the foreclosure mess -- and he wrote about a Tennessee Supreme Court case pitting an insurer against a lender. The reason?
The insured property went into foreclosure, and then burned to the ground. When the lender went back to the insurer for restitution, the insurer balked and said the lender...
How about "what is the size of price declines from the top so far?"
We obtained a report from Tradition Financial Services, Inc. that definitely deserves some attention. The firm located high points in each major market and then calculated just how far prices have fallen since then.
Housing Wire was named to a list of five "Must-reads in a Web 2.0 world" by Fortune today, along with our favorite blog ever, DealBreaker. We're just humbled to be in such rarified company -- and it's motivating to see that the idea here of creating a financial news outlet for the mortgage industry has really caught...
We swear we thought we'd seen it all. Every possible tie into the mortgage meltdown -- lumber sales slowing, Home Depot and Lowe's seeing profits dip, paper sales off. You know, the standard items tied to housing.
But now we've seen it all. Because we found Rescue Rick. Leave it to our chum RR to tie the mortgage mess to a need for better lawn safety. Yes, lawn safety.
Perhaps proving that the USA Today isn't really so much a newspaper as it is light reading for those whose delicate minds can't process actual news -- we dare you to find a story anywhere in the paper longer than 1,000 words -- the chart-toting daily named National Association of Realtors chief economist Lawrence Yun to its list of top 10 most accurate forecasters.
We're still trying to process what sort of 'accuracy' USA Today used as its benchmark, as Yun has been fisked repeatedly...
So how much did technology and more specifically, automated underwriting, factor into the current subprime crisis? In this former lender’s opinion, the impact was substantial.
The widespread use of automated underwriting (AU) technology eventually brought subprime lending into the 21st century. Although systems were slow to develop, most lenders had some form of AU technology in place by 2004. The more robust systems used risk-based decision-making that went beyond basic underwriting...
Via Bloomberg, a little slice of American lore:
The New York Stock Exchange is closed today, as it has been every Good Friday for nearly a century and a half except for in 1898, 1906 and 1907.
That last one was in the same year as the infamous Panic of 1907, when the value of U.S. stocks plunged by more than a third. Hence, a legend that persists 101...
A thought-provoking story at Bloomberg notes that the Federal Reserve bypassed the emergency-lending policies in the Federal Reserve Act while helping prevent Bear Stearns from slipping under the waves:
Guidelines revised in 2002 say the Fed should charge non- banks more than the highest rate that commercial banks pay. Instead, Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and his...
Inquiring minds want to know. In an upcoming story, we'll be looking at how the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development pulled its housing price values. Want to know why? Because we can't quite figure out why some areas in Idaho saw their lending limits raised, while a place like Las Vegas was passed over.
There's also the itty-bitty problem of the new lending limits in the Golden State often not even being in the same ZIP code as the median prices published by the...
Roland Arnall, founder of subprime pioneer Ameriquest Mortgage Co, died of cancer on Monday morning in Los Angeles.
Reuters has complete coverage here.
