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Just to ask his mortgage service about his home loan cost $9.99/minute – the same rate charged by many phone sex-operators. But only with the former do you have a chance of really getting schtuped. [Credit Slips]
Sheila C. Bair, the chair of the FDIC, suggests that lenders “restructure all 2/28 and 3/27 subprime hybrid loans for owner-occupied homes in cases where the borrower has been making timely payments but can’t afford the reset payments. Convert these to fixed-rate loans at the starter rate.”
Three years ago, Colorado truck driver Roger Rodriguez was in the market for a new mortgage loan. With radio and Internet ads trumpeting easy approvals, he picked up the phone.
The “housing correction” is turning out to be “more dramatic and more rapid” than Kerry Killenger, WaMu’s chairman and chief executive had expected.
Moody’s economic research company released new projection models sussing out the top ten places in which you don’t want to be trying to sell a house.
Citigroup, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase are joining forces to create a fund that will buy the debt from their mortgage-backed securities. The new group, assembled at the urging of the benevolent and mysterious Dr. Treasury Department, call themselves The Super Bank Friends. Their undying quest: fighting together to prevent the credit market from collapsing and creating a rift in the space-time continuum that would transport America back to 1929.
Last month saw twice as many foreclosures than last September, says RealtyTrac, the foreclosure tracking organization.
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Risky mortgages weren’t just for the poor and financially unsophisticated, spikes in high-rate loans were seen across the income spectrum. [WSJ via Consumer World Blog]
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U.S. strip malls vacancies are up to a 5 1/2 year high of 7.4%, ripples of the sub-prime meltdown. [WSJ]
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A increase in spammers trying to capitalize on the housing crisis can mean only one thing: spammers can read newspapers. [Symantec]
It must not be fun around WaMu headquarters today. Profits are down a whopping 75%.
With all the talk about people finding out their no-money-down, interest-only, and option-ARM mortgages weren’t such a great deal, it’s refreshing to hear these pieces of advice about the fiscally conservative way to buy a house, via Moneycrashers:
In the spring quarter, 25 percent of the foreclosures were in the city itself. The numbers are up even in Belair Edison, a stable working-class neighborhood of neat, two-story row houses adjacent to a picturesque wooded public park.
October is here, which can only mean one thing: $50 billion in option-ARM mortgages ratcheting up to higher interest rates. Here’s four posts of ours that can help affected homeowners see their way clear:
An excellent NYT article alludes to Countrywide Mortgage’s AOL-esque culture of phone reps only concerned about boosting their personal stats, regardless of the ruin it would spell for its customers.
Citibank is warning investors to expect a 60% drop in earnings due to “dislocations in the mortgage-backed securities and credit markets, and deterioration in the consumer credit environment.”
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