June 2006 - MND NewsWire

So far homeowners seem to be keeping their heads above foreclosure in spite of fears that mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures might begin to mount as short-term rates rise. Add to that the possibility that some of the more exotic home loan products like optional payment and interest only mortgages might come home to roost and there has been cause for concern.

American homeowners, however, appear to be holding their own.

The Mortgage Bankers Association released its National Delinquency Survey for the first quarter of 2006 on last week and ...

As it does periodically, the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies has issued a report that is well worth the paper it takes to print it out from where it resides on-line.

This most recent report, issued earlier this month, concerns a subject near and dear and overdone - the Housing Bubble. Harvard, however, takes a different tack; while it expects prices to remain stable, the focus is on whether home ownership can continue to be even moderately affordable for middle and low income Americans.

The housing sector, the report states, continues to benefit from the ...

In spite of the Dog Days of Summer, mortgage activity held up fairly well for the week ended June16, down only a tiny bit from that reported for the previous week. Applications, however, continued to show double-digit differences from the same week in 2005.

The most striking difference between the MBS and Freddie Mac survey results was in the category of one-year ARMS. While, as noted above, Freddie reported...

A study released last week by Global Insight and National City Corporation titled House Prices in America concludes that in 71 metropolitan areas representing 39 percent of the total value of single family homes in the country those homes were extremely overvalued in the first quarter of 2006.

The study examined 317 metropolitan areas containing 84 percent of single family house values in the United States...

Remember Franklin Raines? In December 2004 he and Timothy Howard were very much in the news as they "retired" or "resigned" or were fired, depending on which version one was reading as CEO and CFO of Fannie Mae. Their sudden unemployment followed probes, lawsuits, and audits that revealed that Fannie Mae had cooked the books over a three year period of time in such a way as to "smooth" income and expenses. One reason suspected at that time was to ensure that the Corporation's net income every year was sufficient to match the benchmarks necessary to trigger large performance bonuses to its executives.

On the way out the door, Raines and Howard collected severance packages that turned more than a few heads...

Freddie Mac's monthly Economic Outlook for June was released last week. In what has become a mantra, the corporations Office of the Chief Economist, quoting Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke's recent remarks, is predicting an "orderly and moderate cooling of the housing sector."

In the face of a lot of less optimistic predictions that are being bandied about, a few of which we have talked about here, it is hard to decide ihf Freddie Mac's insistence on a "soft landing" is a reassuring note or whistling in the wind.

Anyway, the current report states that ...

Rising inflation fears led to an increase in mortgage rates across the board according to Freddie Mac's Weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the week ended June 1. At the same time the survey conducted by the Mortgage Bankers Association had a more mixed outcome.

Freddie Mac's survey placed the average rate...

One of the most vocal proponents of the Chicken Little philosophy of real estate is John R. Talbott, who in 2003 wrote the best selling book The Coming Crash in the Housing Market. His new book Sell Now! The End of the Housing Bubble was published this year and has occasioned a lot of press and a certain amount of hysteria.