Decision closes U.S. probe into actions that contributed to financial meltdown Ten years after faulty mortgages upended the global financial system, Wells Fargo & Co. agreed to pay $2.09 billion to settle a U.S. investigation into its creation and sale of loans that contributed to the disaster. The long-anticipated penalty, announced Wednesday, is in line with what some analysts had Continue Reading

•Housing demand fell 9.6 percent in June, compared with June 2017, according to a monthly index from Redfin. That is the largest decline since April 2016. •The number of people requesting home tours fell 6.1 percent annually in June. •While supply declined overall, Redfin noted a large increase in listings in some of the most supply-starved markets, which is where home prices have overheated Continue Reading

Total loan modifications equaled total liquidations in June, according to a snapshot of the housing market published by the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. Citing a report by Hope Now, the center’s Monthly Chartbook indicated that around 8.3 million borrowers had received a loan modification since the third quarter of 2007 compared with around 8.6 million liquidations in the same Continue Reading

Consumer debt is approaching new highs with the current household debt set to be $1 trillion above the peak debt level of 2008, by the end of June 2018, according to a study by LendingTree. In the second quarter, consumer debt levels are approaching $15.7 trillion compared with $14.7 trillion a decade ago, the study found. Yet, mortgages make up a small part of it. Unlike the last high in 2008, Continue Reading

Mortgage delinquencies defied several trends in April, according to the latest First Look at the month’s mortgage performance data from Black Knight, Inc. April is typically a month that sees an increase in mortgage delinquencies. In fact, historically, delinquencies have increased during April 85 percent of the time, according to Black Knight. Not so for this year, however—in April 2018, Black Continue Reading

The delinquency rate for mortgages on one-to-four-unit residential properties fell to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.63 percent at the end of the first quarter, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). This marks a 54-basis-point drop from the fourth quarter and an eight-basis-point decline from one year earlier. However, the share of home loans on which foreclosure Continue Reading

The notion of buying a home with no money down is understandably alluring. But what looks sexy in a lender’s advertisement does not always translate into what is best for your financial well-being. What is a zero-down loan? Also known as 100 percent financing, zero-down loans require no down payment to purchase a home. For those with little to no cash in savings, these loans are touted as a Continue Reading

Up 4% but still down 19% from a year earlier and 32% from the post-crash high. A total of 189,870 U.S. properties with a foreclosure filing during the first quarter of 2018, up 4% from the previous quarter but still down 19% from a year ago and 32% below the pre-recession average of 278,912 per quarter from Q1 2006 to Q3 2007, ATTOM Data Solutions reported Thursday. It was the sixth consecutive Continue Reading

How is the housing market poised at the end of the first quarter of 2018 and what can one expect in the near and long-term future? A webinar about The State of the U.S. Housing Market by Carrington Mortgage Holdings hosted by Rick Sharga, EVP, Carrington Mortgage Holdings looked at the various indicators that are affecting the housing market today and how they would impact it in the Continue Reading

According to a new report by Moody’s Investor Service, Freddie Mac loans refinanced under the Home Affordable Refinance Program will continue to outperform pre-crisis Freddie loans that did not enter the program, but will also continue to lag behind post-crisis Freddie loans. The Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) was instituted by the Federal Housing Finance Agency in March 2009, designed Continue Reading