../../../..//2007/12/18/31-people-in-florida-were/
31 people in Florida were indicted in a complex mortgage fraud scheme that installed scammers at every level of the transaction, from buyers to sellers to bank employees, title agents, and appraisers. [NYT]
Stephen O’Brien wants to buy a foreclosed apartment building on Warwick Street in Roxbury. He wants to keep the ground-floor tenant, James Evans, 77, who is partially blind and living on Social Security.
On Friday the Senate passed new legislation that would make more Federal Housing Administration Loans available to troubled borrowers facing foreclosure, lowering the down payment required and allowing larger loans. The House passed similar legislation in September, and now House and Senate members will have to “resolve a number of differences between the two pieces of legislation,” says the Wall Street Journal.
../../../..//2007/12/14/what-if-instead-of-bailing/
What if instead of bailing out SIV owners, we were bailing SUV owners? A satirical look at the subprime-meltdown. [Patrick.net via My Money Blog]
../../../..//2007/12/12/if-youre-facing-foreclosure-you/
If you’re facing foreclosure, you can call 888-995-HOPE and get free advice from non-profit counselors about how to save your house or at least minimize the damage.
Coppedge saw it coming in slow motion. Around this time last year, she was mostly dealing with renters who were behind on payments. Rarely did she counsel at-risk homeowners. When she did, they were usually suffering a one-time setback such as job loss.
If you’re married and the two of you own your house, is your legal title recorded as “joint tenants” or “community property”? If you bought it recently, odds are good it’s “community property” (and it should also include “with right of survivorship”).
The Administration and the mortgage industry came to an accord yesterday to freeze loan rates and offer relief for some sub-prime mortgage borrowers. Here’s the salient details.
Here’s another mortgage that should have never been made: A single mother earning $34,000 a year buys a ranch house for $385,000 by taking out two mortgages. Her then boyfriend was helping with payments, but then there wasn’t more more construction work. Blogger JLP figures she was probably putting 86% of her income towards the mortgage.
Tomorrow, President Bush will outline a plan to freeze rates for 5 years for subprime mortgage loans that “originated between January 1, 2005, and July 31, 2007, with rates that are due to reset between January 1 of next year and June or July of 2010,” reports Reuters.
H&R Block has decided to admit defeat after a plan to sell its troubled subprime lending operation to Cerberus Capital Management LP finally unraveled.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the national average interest rate on the benchmark 30-year, fixed-rate loan averaged 6.1% last week, the lowest rate since Oct 13, 2005.
My parents just sold their house, a big deal for them, especially because it’s been on the market since the beginning of the summer. The appliances clinched it. They appliances were 10 years old, and while they were in perfect working order, they just didn’t look “contemporary.”
The Glendale Fire Department sent Ann and Mike Collard a notice informing them that the branches on some of their trees were too close to their home. The notice ordered the couple to maintain 5 feet of “vertical clearance between roof surfaces and overhanging portions of trees.”
A new trend is poised to sweep the country: living at the mall. Developers are building luxury condos attached to malls, and at one in the Boston suburbs, they’re selling for $420k to $1.6 million. Some people like the idea of being able to stroll downstairs and go to Nordstrom’s and Neiman Marcus. Others think that it gives them a taste of their conception of what constitutes urban life. Hey, at least there’s ample parking.
An especially gloomy report by the U.S. Conference of Mayors says that property values across the U.S. could decline by $1.2 trillion next year, slashing tax revenue by $6.6 billion.
../../../..//2007/11/27/turbulence-consumer-confidence-drops-to/
Turbulence: Consumer confidence drops to 2-year low. Home prices drop the sharpest they’ve ever dropped. Stocks fall 10%.
You know how these personal finance posts we’re always publishing tell you to find a place where you can actually afford to live? But how people respond that it’s not that easy to find affordable, decent towns? Well, here you go: 50 not-too-shabby places around the country, presented in a clicky slide show and illustrated with satellite images for that Google Maps/Homeland Security look that feels so now.
Part of 
