Subject: Foreclosure & Financial Crisis
-
The New York Times is reporting a new tack taken by the Obama administration to address the foreclosure crisis, this time acknowledging that some homeowners need to simply get out of their mortgage by way of a short sale, where…
-
As President Obama last week headed west to Nevada to promote a $1.5 billion program that would hone in on five states—Nevada, Florida, Michigan, Arizona, and California—hit hardest by the housing bust, concerns for a real overhaul of the Treasury’s…
-
When Tishman Speyer Properities and Blackrock announced a few weeks back that they would default on their $3 billion mortgage loan, it looked as though the principal owners of New York City’s sprawling, 11,000-unit Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town would…
-
The administration last week announced changes to its Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) after falling short of its goals of staving off foreclosures by way of mortgage modifications, with some saying the program has actually hurt the economic recovery because…
-
The New York Times has a pretty good rundown of all the players involved in the collapse of the sale of New York City’s Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town apartment complexes, replete with this quote: Its the poster child for…
-
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the purchaser of two colossal apartment complexes on Manhattan’s east side, Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town, has abandoned them to its creditors, after it defaulted on the on the $4.4 billion debt…
-
Thinking about walking away from your mortgage because of your underwater mortgage? Stephen Colbert, in his inimitable way, tells us to think again, and to honor mortgage because “your honor was so precious to the banks that they bundled it…
-
What used to be dismissed as a bogeyman by real estate professionals is now a reality of unknown capacity: homes that fall into the shadow inventory of foreclosure. The December report from Lending Processing Services indicates that one in every…
-
The reconciliation that takes place Thursday mornings at Philadelphia City Hall is not some attempt to further prove that Philadelphia is the City of Brotherly Love, it’s part of a citywide program that allows homeowners in danger of defaulting on…
-
Dean Baker, co-director for the Washington, DC-based Center for Economic and Policy Research will present his case in the Winter 2009 issue of Shelterforce for a homeowner’s right to rent in an effort to reduce the impact of the ongoing…
-
Fannie Mae this week announced its Deed for Lease Program that effectively allows qualifying homeowners with Fannie Mae mortgages facing foreclosure the opportunity to rent their home at market rate for up to a year. The move was the latest…
Just three years ago, Marin county residents were busy raising money for a legal fight to stop Habitat for Humanity from building four homes affordable to families making under $56,000/year, saying it would “blight” their exclusive neighborhood of million dollar…
In Arizona, the ever-shifting attempt to assign or avoid the pain of the foreclosure crisis has gone to court. Arizona’s laws had previously said that lenders had no recourse if a homeowner walked away from an underwater residential mortgagethey got…
-
It’s not news in the most literal sense (you know, revelatory, fresh, etc.), but AP reports this week that conservatives are, once again, tacking even further into misguided waters, attacking CRA, blaming the victim for the housing crisis, and, of…
-
The Congressional Oversight Panel assembled a year ago when TARP was enacted in order to review the regulatory system and financial markets offered a sobering analysis last week on the state of the administration’s efforts to stem foreclosures. In short:…
-
On Monday, as I entered Federal Hall on Wall Street to hear President Barack Obama’s speech, a huge crowd gathered outside the building hoping for a glimpse of the president Inside the hall I sat down with 150 Wall Street…
-
In February, the Obama administration launched the Home Affordable Modification Program, an ambitious program that will use up to $75 billion dollars to prevent up to four million homeowners from going into foreclosure. The program works by underwriting some of…
-
A task force led by the National Housing Conference this week released a set of “Ten Key Principles” for repairing the U.S. mortgage market and addressing soaring foreclosures. The task force was assembled to “provide recommendations that will affect consumers,…
-
Alyssa Katz notes that a couple analyses show that the increase in foreclosures caused by subprime mortgages more than outweighed the new first-time homeowners it generated. “So please, no more of this ‘dont forget that subprime helped more people become…
When I first heard of the case of Mamie Ruth Palmer, which hit the news about a year ago, it sounded like quintessential poetic justice: A homeowner who had filed for bankruptcy protection and was still making mortgage payments is…
Next »
National Housing Institute
