Mortgages Blog

Applications for mortgages jumped 23 percent last week, largely due to homeowners taking advantage of record-low rates to refinance, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The refinance portion of total mortgage activity was 82 percent. But as a Bankrate article points out, although rates are low, mortgage fees are about to rise. Congress is set

The Federal Reserve may decide at its meeting next week to give another boost to the housing market with a third round of quantitative easing. Back in 2008, the Fed announced QE1 to keep interest rates low, which involved buying mortgage-backed securities and mortgage debt. In 2009, the program was expanded to include government debt. Then

Did some of America’s largest banks profit by purchasing high-priced fallback insurance policies on homes facing foreclosure? That’s what New York’s state financial regulators want to know in an ongoing probe of the loan servicing operations at several large banks, including Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo. The probe centers on “force-placed”

In February 2007, the subprime meltdown began. Two months before that, members of the Federal Open Market Committee were laughing about borrowers who were having trouble qualifying for mortgages. Sandra Pianalto, president of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank, told her fellow Fedsters during the Dec. 12, 2006, FOMC meeting that she had heard that a

If you plan to unload your home through a short sale, get moving. 2012 may be your last chance to sell a home that is worth less than what you owe without having to face tax consequences. When lenders approve a short sale, the difference between the sale price and what is owed on the

Foreclosure filings hit a four-year low in 2011, but not entirely for the reasons you’d hope. It wasn’t that more people are able to avoid foreclosure, but due, in part, to a processing backlog resulting from the accusations that banks pushed robosigning as a way to get distressed properties through the pipeline quickly without reviewing the

Homeowners who are unemployed and struggling to pay their mortgages may get a break on their mortgage payments for up to a year, says mortgage finance firm Freddie Mac. Freddie currently allows mortgage servicers to give borrowers three to six months to get back on their feet when they are out of work. Starting Feb.

A bulging pipeline is prompting the Obama administration to implement its plan to sell foreclosed properties in bulk to investors who will rent them out, potentially solving the problem of hundreds of thousands of vacant homes dragging down home values. According to CNBNC, the administration is close to announcing the pilot program, which is being

We got relatively good news from the December employment report, released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But it had little immediate effect on the mortgage market. That’s even better news. The economy created 200,000 more jobs than it destroyed in December, and the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent. In a robust economy,

With the Iowa caucus behind us and the election year in full swing, what’s the No. 1 priority for the next president? According to the results of a survey by Trulia.com, a real estate website, it’s not the housing crisis. Lower unemployment and reducing the federal deficit come first. But when asked about housing policy, respondents