Mortgage Press

The Department of Veterans Affairs issued a news release this week trumpeting the continued growth of the VA Loan Guaranty program. The agency backed just under 360,000 loans last year, a 14-percent increase from FY10 and a whopping 168-percent increase since FY07. But that wasn’t the only good news. The release also noted that VA [...]

Mortgage rates are spiking right now as Wall Street begins to bet *with* the economy instead of against it. January’s jobs report may be a tipping point.

The Case-Shiller Index reports that home values fell in November as compared to the month prior. The good news is that we can ignore its findings.

The exact timing of any mortgage rate increase difficult to forecast given that these rates are not “set” – they are determined by market forces.

Accoring to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), mortgages guaranteed by the VA continue to have the lowest serious delinquency and foreclosure rates in the industry. Veterans have also taken advantage of their home loan benefit in record numbers, as VA loan originations reached their highest total in eight years. Since 1944, when home loan guaranties were first offered under the original G.I. Bill, the VA has guaranteed more than 19.4 million home loans worth over $1.1 trillion.Click to continue

U.S. Sens. Mark Begich (D-AK) and John Thune (R-SD) have introduced SB 2054, the Stop the Outrageous Pay (STOP) at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Act, and act which prevents the distribution of undisbursed bonus money and moves all Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac employees onto a structured pay scale similar to that of other federal financial regulators. The Begich-Thune bill follows a series of events from November of 2011, when reports surfaced that the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) approved nearly $13 million in bonus pay for 10 executives at Fannie and Freddie.Click to continue

Freddie Mac has released the results of its Q4 refinance analysis showing that homeowners who refinance continue to strengthen their fiscal house. In the fourth quarter of 2011, 85 percent of homeowners who refinanced their first-lien home mortgage either maintained about the same loan amount or lowered their principal balance by paying-in additional money at the closing table, a 26-year high.Click to continue

The U.S. Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) and U.S. Attorney for the Western District of New York William J. Hochul Jr., have announced that Lori J. Macakanja of Dunkirk, N.Y., who was convicted of mail fraud and theft of government money, was sentenced to 72 months in prison and three years of supervised release by U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Arcara. Judge Arcara also ordered the defendant to pay $298,639 in restitution to the victims.Click to continue

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed suit against several of the nation’s largest banks charging that the creation and use of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) has resulted in a range of deceptive and fraudulent foreclosure filings in New York state and federal courts, harming homeowners and undermining the integrity of the judicial foreclosure process.Click to continue

CoreLogic has released its December Home Price Index (HPI) report showing that distressed sales home prices in the U.S. decreased 4.7 percent in 2011 (compared with December 2010). This year-end report shows that home prices continued the trend of year-end decreases, the fifth consecutive year with a decrease in the HPI. The HPI, excluding distressed sales, showed that home prices decreased by 0.9 percent in 2011, giving an indication of the impact of distressed sales on home prices in 2011.Click to continue