Earlier this year, the FHA and HUD issued a press release about changes to the FHA mortgage insurance policy. The new policy will include alterations to current mortgage insurance premium policy and how long such policies remain in effect. The short version of the announced changes includes a higher MIP, plus a policy change that [...]

Court rules that MERS meets definition of beneficiary (via AGBeat) State Court rules in favor of MERS MERSCORP Holdings, Inc. today announced that a five-justice panel of the Idaho Supreme Court unanimously affirmed a lower court decision in favor of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc. (MERS) and three other defendants, dismissing the Plaintiff’s complaint…   [...]

Whether it’s called a loan modification, mortgage modification, restructuring, or workout plan, it’s when a borrower who is facing great financial hardship, having difficulty making their mortgage payments and is facing foreclosure, works with their lender to change the terms of their mortgage loan to make it affordable. The workout plan varies by lender, but [...]

  Economic Highlights for the Week Ending December 21, 2012 MONDAY, December 17th All eyes are on Washington and the fiscal cliff negotiations this week. Perceived progress in the situation boosted stocks today with the Dow up 0.8% to 13325. Oil prices were steady at $87.50 while gold hovered at $1700. A successful fiscal deal [...]

This Week; of course it’s the Cliff in the headlines. This week the FOMC meeting concludes on Wednesday with expectations the Fed will announce it will continue to buy US long dated treasuries when Operation Twist expires at the end of this month. The key economic data isn’t out until later this week with Nov [...]

Amid increases in new construction, homebuilder confidence, and existing home sales, Freddie Mac reported fixed mortgage rates reaching new record lows for the second week in a row. “Fixed mortgage rates continued to ease somewhat this week to record lows and should help the ongoing housing recovery,” said Frank Nothaft, chief economist at Freddie Mac. [...]

Despite some apparent good will towards one another, and promises of setting partisan politics aside, to avoid the impeding fiscal cliff, mortgage rates still managed to move slightly downward last week. Economic data is beginning to show the impact of superstorm Sandy, and the next few months are likely to have some data, especially employment [...]

Much in the same vein as Greece and QE3, the Fiscal Cliff is the new mega-issue du jour for financial markets.  That this was likely to become an issue is nothing new, and we weren’t alone in citing the CRFB piece back in July.  But now that Greece is continuing to gain acceptance as a [...]

MONDAY, November 12th VETERANS DAY Bond Market Closed   TUESDAY, November 13th The National Federation of Independent Business’ small business optimism index rose to 93.1 in October from a reading of 92.8 in September. The level of the index indicates a fairly pessimistic outlook by small business owners which is probably related to continued uncertainty [...]

MCLEAN, Va., Nov. 14, 2012 /PRNewswire/ – Freddie Mac (OTC: FMCC) released today its U.S. Economic and Housing Market Outlook for November showing what a healthy national housing market should look like taking into account recent trends, key housing indicators and the shifting demographic patterns that will define a new and realistic trajectory over the next five [...]