by Lance Churchill
The California Supreme Court on March 26, 2008, declined to review a Court of Appeals decision holding that the requirement that agents representing investor purchasers of foreclosures must be bonded for twice the amount of the transaction was vague and unenforceable. Schweitzer v. Westminster Investments (Ct Appeals 12/31/07). This now means that agents no longer need to be bonded and can represent investor purchasers and receive a commission as the selling agent.  Agents, however, need to keep in mind that the other requirements of the law regarding equity purchases are still valid, such as the form of the contract to be used and the 5-day cancellation period.  Also, although a nearly identical bonding requirement is contained in the Foreclosure Consultant’s law, the Court did not review any portion of that law in its decision.  If you would like to learn more about this decision, please visit the link below.

To listen to Lance Churchill speak about this, you can visit this link.

Although some forecasters say a catastrophic, 40% plunge in home prices from their peak is possible, a more likely scenario is a decline of 20-25% before a recovery starts to kick in. By Kirk Shinkle, U.S. News & World Report / MSN Real Estate

A year ago, most economists talked in worried tones about the possibility that American home prices could slip after almost doubling during the prior decade. At worst, fretted Wall Street’s more bearish forecasters, prices could drop as much as 20% from their peak in a more dire version of the last housing downturn, during the early 1990s, when new-home sales dipped but existing homes held their value.

To view all of this article, please visit this link at MSN Real Estate

J.W. ELPHINSTONE, AP / AOL Money & Finance

NEW YORK (AP) - Nervous homeowners and economic analysts have been wondering how much worse the housing market could get. On Thursday they got an answer: Plenty.

Foreclosures are at a record high. Home equity is at a record low. The housing market is spiraling down with no end in sight - and taking people’s sense of economic security with it.

To view all of this article, please visit this link at AOL Money

CNNMoney.com

WASHINGTON (AP) - The government on Wednesday raised the mortgage limits for loans guaranteed by the Federal Housing Administration in 14 high-cost California counties.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development released the new loan limits for California — a hotbed during the housing boom that now is suffering the worst home-price declines in the nation. The limits, with the maximum at $729,750, are derived from median home prices in each county.

HUD is expected to raise the limits in other counties nationwide in the coming days.
To view all of this article, please visit this link at CNNMoney.com

JEANNINE AVERSA, AP / AOL Money
WASHINGTON (AP) - Home foreclosures soared to an all-time high in the final quarter of last year, underscoring the suffering of distressed homeowners and the growing danger the housing meltdown poses for the economy.

The Mortgage Bankers Association, in a quarterly snapshot of the mortgage market released Thursday, said the proportion of all mortgages nationwide that fell into foreclosure shot up to a record high of 0.83 percent in the October-to-December quarter. That surpassed the previous high of 0.78 percent set in the prior quarter.

“Clearly it’s the worst it’s been,” chief association economist Doug Duncan said in an interview with The Associated Press.
To view all of this article, please visit this link at AOL Money

BlownMortgage.com

Wells Fargo has named nearly every California county a “Severely Distressed Market” which requires LTV reductions of 5% for any conforming loan over 75% LTV and also eliminates financing over 75% LTV for any non-conforming loan. The Wells Fargo Mortgage Express product (which is Wells Fargo’s stated income/stated asset program) is also not permitted in “Severely Distressed Market” areas.

Look for the rest of the market leaders to quickly follow suit. This immediately puts a huge swath of the state with increasingly limited refinance options. A huge portion of California loans are of the non-conforming variety and well over the 75% LTV mark (especially factoring in the major price drops over the last 16 months). This does not bode well for the folks in the Golden State.

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

KELLY EVANS, SERENA NG and RUTH SIMON / WALL STREET JOURNAL

The decline in U.S. home prices accelerated in the fourth quarter, according to two leading barometers, compounding two of the biggest threats facing the nation’s economy: faltering consumer spending and tight credit markets.

The S&P/Case-Shiller national home-price index for the fourth quarter fell 8.9% from a year earlier, the largest drop in its 20 years of data. And the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s index — which tracks only homes purchased with mortgages guaranteed by home-loan giants Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac — was down 0.3%, the first year-to-year decline in the measure’s 16 years.
To view all of this article, please visit this link at Wall Street Journal

Bloomberg / Sharon L. Lynch

Bank seizures of U.S. homes almost doubled in January as property owners failed to make higher payments on adjustable-rate mortgages.

Repossessions rose 90 percent to 45,327 last month from the same period a year ago, according to RealtyTrac Inc., a seller of foreclosure statistics that has a database of more than 1 million properties. Total foreclosure filings, which include default and auction notices as well as bank seizures, increased 57 percent.
To view all of this article, please visit this link at Bloomberg.com