Fannie Mae financial fallout

Fannie Mae financial fallout

SAMMY SUGGESTS: TO BUY GOLD, LAND, AND RAISE HORSES AS A SOUND INVESTMENT AGAINST INFLATION

Sammy
02-27-08, 07:03 AM
Euro tops 1.50 as U.S. dollar dives

It is all speculation from the Wall Street bankers who want to rule the world playing with the lowering and raising of the U.S. Dollar to increase their exchange profits.

Never sell the U.S Dollar short because then you would have to pay more money to re-buy it, good weather and bad weather does not last for ever.

Sammy

No more in-house appraisals...
:cool:
Deal May Protect New Home Buyers
March 3, 2008 - The N.Y. Attorney General has reached an agreement with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac.

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New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo ended an investigation into inflated home appraisals in an agreement announced Monday with government-sponsored lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The agreement would end the practice of using in-house staff for initial home appraisals and would prohibit the use of appraisal management companies owned or controlled lenders. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, under the agreement, will only purchase loans that meet the new standards.

Cuomo says lenders have pressured appraisers to bump up the listed value of homes, contributing to a national mortgage crisis that is forcing families into foreclosure. “We believe the appraisals were often fraudulent because of a conflict of interest and pressure on the appraisers," Cuomo said. “To us, this issue was a pervasive issue that needed to be solved." The lenders acknowledged no wrongdoing in the agreement.

“We are pleased to work with regulators to do our part to ensure sound, accurate, independent and reliable appraisals," Fannie Mae General Counsel Beth Wilkinson said in a prepared statement. She said Fannie Mae will make sure appraisals are independent and the valuation placed on a home is accurate under the Home Valuation Protection Code.

Fannie Mae will require lenders to conform to the code beginning in 2009. Cuomo has been investigating billions of dollars of home loans that Fannie and Freddie bought from banks, including the largest U.S. savings and loan, Washington Mutual Inc. “I believe consumer confidence should be restored," Cuomo said. “With these reforms we will have a safer, better evaluation process."

[url:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=4378616&page=1[/url]

Investigation into subprime CEO pay...
:cool:
Mortgage Millionaires to Answer to Congress
March 6, 2008 - Three CEOs Behind the Subprime Market Face Inquiry About Their Pay Packages

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Three CEOs who made millions of dollars off the housing market — even as homeowners and their companies started to suffer — are expected to testify before Congress Friday about why they deserved such large compensation packages. Countrywide Financial Corp. chairman and chief executive officer Angelo Mozilo, former Merrill Lynch CEO E. Stanley O’Neal and Charles Prince, former chairman and CEO of Citigroup, have all been asked to tell Congress whether they believe their pay was justified.

Take Mozilo. As CEO of Countrywide, the nation’s largest lender, he stands to make millions if Bank of America’s proposed $4 billion acquisition of his company goes through. Facing mounting public opposition, Mozilo has already said that he would give up $37.5 million of severance pay, fees and benefits linked to his expected departure after the Bank of America deal closes. He also gave up some other benefits, such as use of the company’s aircraft. But he still won’t leave empty-handed. Separate from his severance package, Mozilo will still keep various retirement benefits and deferred compensation already earned. Those add up to about $44 million.

And there is more. Mozilo sold more than $127 million in stock options early on in 2007. Those sales came before he announced a $388 million write-down on profits and Countrywide’s growing problems became apparent. As the company’s troubles continued, Mozilo kept selling shares, cashing out an additional $30 million in options.

More [url:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=4395644&page=1[/url]

Anti-foreclosure hotline leaves callers cold...
:mad:
Mortgage relief plan falling short
13 Mar.`08 - Hope Now hotline leaves callers frustrated; ‘more work to be done’

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The government’s flagship program to give struggling homeowners relief from overwhelming mortgage payments has left hundreds if not thousands of callers frustrated by long wait times, lack of follow-up and relatively minor loan modifications that have failed to help. A story last week on msnbc.com generated hundreds of e-mail responses from readers who have called the heavily promoted hotline. Almost all the callers said they encountered a variety of roadblocks in their efforts to save their homes.

Officials affiliated with the effort said in interviews that they have helped many borrowers but say there are misunderstandings about the limited scope of the program. The Hope Now Alliance, a private partnership organized by the federal government, launched in October and trumpeted repeatedly by President Bush and other top administration officials, has been criticized by members of Congress, state officials, and private credit counselors.

To date, the federal government’s efforts to help the growing number of homeowners facing foreclosure have focused largely on prodding lenders to modify existing loans to more affordable levels. More than a million of these loans, written during the height of the lending boom, are scheduled to reset to interest rates that many homeowners will no longer be able to afford. But the Hope Now hotline has left many callers frustrated and without hope, judging from e-mail correspondence. Readers report difficulty getting through to hotline counselors, cursory reviews of their cases, lack of follow-up, confusion over who is eligible for help, and, for those who did reach lenders, relatively minor loan modifications that weren’t sustainable over the long term.

More [url:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23581774/[/url]

See also:

February foreclosures up 60 percent over '07
Feb. foreclosures up 60 percent over year before; Nevada, California, Florida have highest rates of those losing their homes

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Nearly 60 percent more U.S. homes faced foreclosure in February than in the same month last year, with Nevada, California and Florida showing the highest foreclosure rates, a research firm said Wednesday. A total of 223,651 homes across the nation received at least one notice from lenders last month related to overdue payments, up 59.8 percent from 139,922 a year earlier, according to Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac Inc. Nearly half of the homes on the most recent list had slipped into default for the first time.

Nevada had the nation’s highest foreclosure rate, with one in every 165 households receiving at least one foreclosure-related notice. It had 6,167 properties facing foreclosure, a 68 percent increase from a year earlier and up 1 percent from January, RealtyTrac said. Most of the troubled properties were located in California, Florida, Texas, Michigan and Ohio — states where home prices have plunged as the housing boom went bust. The overall U.S. foreclosure rate last month was one filing for every 557 homes.

February’s total represents a 4 percent dip from January, but the decline was just a seasonal blip, said Rick Sharga, RealtyTrac’s vice president of marketing. “We seem to be settling in at a new plateau in terms of monthly activity, but it’s a much higher plateau than we were at a year ago,” he said. February marked the 26th consecutive month with a national year-over-year increase in foreclosure-related filings.

Meanwhile, the number of foreclosed properties that didn’t sell at auction and ended up going back to lenders soared more than 110 percent last month versus February 2007, RealtyTrac said. Last month, some 46,508 properties were repossessed by lenders, up from 22,114 a year earlier.

More [url:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23601813/[/url]

Credit gets tighter...
:eek:
The next shoe to drop in housing
March 15, 2008: Rising foreclosures and big losses at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are making it harder for people with good credit backgrounds to get a traditional mortgage.

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The credit crunch has finally hit the traditional mortgage market. Investors are now shunning mortgage-backed securities issued by government sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been critical in keeping the real estate market from completely falling apart. Some fear this development will make it harder for people, even those with strong credit histories, to get a home loan.

“Even if you have good credit, you don’t know if they are going to give you a loan or not," said Joseph Mason, a senior fellow at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. And for those who can still get a loan, the tremors in the mortgage-backed securities market has made loans more expensive for borrowers. As the prices of mortgage-backed securities have fallen, their yields have risen, leading to higher mortgage rates.

The national average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was 5.96% Thursday, after jumping to 6.08% earlier this week, according to Bankrate.com. Rates on a 30-year fixed mortgage were about 5.90% a week ago. A borrower looking for a 5-year adjustable-rate mortgage would pay 5.71% today, up from around 5.03% a week ago. “The cost of mortgage financing has increased dramatically and it couldn’t come at a worse time," said Tom LaMalfa, managing director of Wholesale Access, a mortgage research firm. “We’re going to see a further diminishment of available mortgage money."

[url=http://money.cnn.com/2008/03/13/news/economy/conformingloans/index.htm?section=money_mostpopular:
Not just a subprime problem anymore[/url]

5% of houses to be foreclosed in Calif.
:eek:
1 In 20 Homeowners In California To Face Foreclosure
April 27, 2008 - - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in San Francisco, California on Saturday to campaign on legislation to curb the country’s mortgage crisis, reports said Sunday.

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Pelosi told the San Francisco Chronicle that about 8.8 million homeowners in the U.S. owed more on mortgages than their homes are originally worth. In California, Pelosi said, one in every 20 homeowners will face foreclosure in the next two years. According to ABC News, Pelosi was pushing for a series of bailout measures and expects Congress to act by May 5.

“We want to simplify it for homeowners so they can keep their homes. We want to make it possible for renters to be able to live in affordable housing," ABC News reported quoting Pelosi. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, who promoted his 'don’t borrow trouble' campaign, said lenders foreclosed some 130 properties in the Bayview in the first quarter, the report added.

The Chronicle said Pelosi blamed the mortgage crisis on greedy lenders and the Bush administration. She urged voters to vote for a Democrat as the country’s next president. Pelosi were among the speakers in a foreclosure workshop in San Francisco’s Bayview District. The workshop was one of 25 being held in California, ABC News said.

[url:
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010774146[/url]

Good market for process servers...
:eek:
Foreclosure Industry Is Booming
April 29, 2008 - Foreclosure Specialists Multiply While Housing Crisis Has Yet to Peak

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If you want a sense of the scale of the mortgage meltdown in this country, tag along with Sean Zawyer and Seth Gissen for a day. They are process servers, sworn officers of the court, hired to deliver bad news. Their company delivers about 5,000 foreclosure notices in the Miami area each month. “I don’t even know if there’s words to describe the number of foreclosures that are coming out," Zawyer said.

“Amazing, because we’ve been in business for 10 years and grown steadily, 20, 30 percent, steadily. And in a year and a half, you double an existing business." They now have 55 employees — 25 in the office and another 30 servers who deliver foreclosure notices. Zawyer and Gissen are not the only ones kept busy by the foreclosure crisis — so are moving companies, as banks evict owners who fall behind on their payments. In Rockwall County, Texas, the sheriff is called in to evict about six families a week.

On the other side of the country, outside Los Angeles, there’s a booming industry in preparing repossessed homes for resale. Two years ago, WSR Preservation Services, a California property maintenance company that specializes in cleaning up foreclosed homes, had 10 employees. Today, they have 60. “We have bicycles, we have toys, you know. Again, this was probably a nice little family who could just not make the mortgage payment," John Plocher, president of WSR Preservation Services, said as he surveyed a home in suburban Los Angeles that had clearly been abandoned in a hurry.

More [url:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=4751251&page=1[/url]

Congress tryin' to fix foreclosure crisis...
;)
Senate Considers Broad Housing Bill
Thursday, Jun. 19, 2008 (WASHINGTON) — The Senate began considering a broad housing package Thursday after clearing away conservative GOP objections, paving the way for votes this week on the election-year foreclosure rescue that could help hundreds of thousands of struggling homeowners.

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House and Senate Republicans voiced reservations about the bill in light of allegations that Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd, D-Conn., one of its architects, and Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., got cut-rate home loans through a VIP program at Countrywide Financial Corp., a leading subprime lender at the center of the mortgage meltdown. But Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., dropped a threat to block the measure. Democrats and Republicans consider the legislation a political imperative amid rising foreclosures and growing public anxiety about the sagging economy. “We have a responsibility to respond to the plight of the American family, and to their pessimism, and to renew their confidence in the promise of the American dream," Dodd said.

Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, the senior Banking Republican who exacted large concessions from Dodd to win bipartisan backing for the measure, said acting on it was a chance to show that Congress could move on a pressing issue. “The American people expect us to provide effective and timely solutions the best we can," Shelby said. The centerpiece of the package is a foreclosure rescue program in which the Federal Housing Administration would provide $300 billion in new, cheaper mortgages for distressed homeowners who otherwise would be considered too financially risky to qualify for government-insured, fixed-rate loans.

Borrowers would be eligible if their mortgage holders were willing to take a substantial loss and allow them to refinance, and would ultimately have to share with the government a portion of any profits they made from selling or refinancing their properties. The measure is designed to help hundreds of thousands of borrowers in danger of losing their homes, but it also would benefit mortgage holders by allowing them to avoid costly foreclosures and reclaim some of what they’re owed by people facing financial ruin.

[url=http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1816215,00.html?xid=feed-rss-netzero:
MORE[/url]

RISK OF FORECLOSURE DUE TO ECONOMY

IS THERE A PROGRAM FANNIEMAE CAN HELP US WITH OUR OUT LANDISH MORTGAGE?OUR MORTGAGE WENT UP 208.00$ MORE A MONTH AND IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO KEEP MAKING THESE PAYMENTS.