Bob Ivry / Bloomberg

Joe Lents hasn’t made a payment on his $1.5 million mortgage since 2002.

That’s when Washington Mutual Inc. first tried to foreclose on his home in Boca Raton, Florida. The Seattle-based lender failed to prove that it owned Lents’s mortgage note and dropped attempts to take his house. Subsequent efforts to foreclose have stalled because no one has produced the paperwork.
To view all of this article, please visit this link at Bloomberg.com

It turns out that massive interest rate spikes aren’t the problem — many borrowers couldn’t afford these mortgages even at the low, introductory interest rates.

Les Christie, CNNMoney.com

For months, we’ve fretted about the Armageddon that will hit when subprime adjustable rate mortgages start resetting to much higher interest rates.

What’s happening is even worse: Many of these loans are defaulting well before their rates increase.

Defaults for subprime loans issued in 2007 – none of which have reset yet – hit 11.2 percent in November. That represents perhaps 300,000 households, and is twice the default rate that 2006 loans had 10 months after being issued, according to Friedman, Billings Ramsey analyst Michael Youngblood.

To view all of this article, please visit this link at CNNMoney.com

Local FBI office heads ‘foreclosure rescue’ fraud probe

Christina Jewett / SacBee.com

The FBI is investigating a suspected “foreclosure rescue” fraud that may have cost as many as 256 homeowners title to their property and stripped them of their equity.

The alleged scam includes at least seven Sacramento homeowners and 61 statewide, and the probe is based in the Sacramento FBI office, according to court documents, interviews and an Internal Revenue Service search warrant obtained by The Bee.

An additional 100 investors who believed they were helping people on the brink of foreclosure also may have been swept up in the alleged scheme, with many having their credit ruined.

To view all of this article, please visit this link at SacBee.com

RealtyTimes / Broderick Perkins

Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist for the Golden State’s realtor association has had to revise her forecast to include a larger than expected decline in California’s home prices this year.

But a new $152 billion economic stimulus package from the U.S. Congress could provide mortgage relief to home buyers in California and other high-cost housing markets.

To view all of this article, please visit this link at Realty Times

The Wall Street Journal / BRETT ARENDS

If you own a home in a former bubble region like California or southern Florida, there’s bad news… and really bad news.

And they suggest that it is still way too early to go bargain hunting in these markets, although — of course — there is always the occasional deal around.

The bad news is fresh market data published Monday night by real-estate Web site Zillow.com. They show prices, as expected, kept slumping through the end of last year.

To view all of this article, please visit this link at The Wall Street Journal

CNBC / New York Times

The credit crisis is no longer just a subprime mortgage problem.

As home prices fall and banks tighten lending standards, people with good, or prime, credit histories are falling behind on their payments for home loans, auto loans and credit cards at a quickening pace, according to industry data and economists.

To view all of this article, please visit this link at CNBC

RealtyTimes / Blanche Evans

If you’re wondering why raising conforming loan limits from $417,000 to $625,000 will help borrowers, here’s one good reason — California. Over one in eight U.S. residents lives in California, so what happens there, doesn’t stay there.

To view all of this article, please visit this link at Realty Times

Kathy M. Kristof,, E. Scott Reckard and David Colker, Los Angeles Times

ens of thousands of homeowners with home equity lines of credit are getting a rude surprise: They’ve been told by their lender that they can no longer take money out on their credit lines because sinking home prices have left them with little or no equity.

Among the lenders taking such action is Countrywide Financial Corp., which sent 122,000 letters to customers last week telling them they could no longer borrow against their credit lines. In some cases, according to the company, the borrowers are now “upside down” — the total debt on the home exceeds the market value of the property.

To view all of this article, please visit this link at The Los Angeles Times

Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer

The housing and mortgage meltdown caused the biggest one-year drop in the rate of homeownership on record, according to government figures released Tuesday.

The decline, while expected, is yet another indication of the housing market’s sudden and dramatic turn.

The Census Bureau report showed that home owners accounted for 67.8% of occupied homes in the fourth quarter, down 1.1 points from a year earlier. It’s the largest year-over-year drop recorded in the report.

To view all of this article, please visit this link at CNNMoney.com