The White House temporarily suspends a rule that imposes a 90-day waiting period before foreclosed homes can be sold to receive government loans.

AP / CNNMoney

The Bush administration is temporarily suspending a 5-year-old rule intended to deter property flippers, as part of an effort to help speed the sale of foreclosed properties.

For one year, the Federal Housing Administration will no longer impose a 90-day waiting period before foreclosed properties can be sold to receive government-backed loans.

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Prashant Gopal / Business Week / Yahoo Finance

By April, 2009, hundreds of thousands of option ARM mortgages will begin resetting, bringing on a fresh wave of foreclosures.

The American homeowner must feel like one of those characters in an old cartoon who has just been hit by a falling piano. After dusting himself off and touching the large bump on his head, he probably doesn’t expect another piano to be dangling overhead. But he’d be wrong.

But what’s often funny in a cartoon is anything but in real life. With the subprime mortgage crisis already crippling the U.S. economy, some experts are warning that the next wave of foreclosures will begin accelerating in April, 2009. What that means is that hundreds of thousands of borrowers who took out so-called option adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) will begin to see their monthly payments skyrocket as they reset. About a million borrowers have option ARMs, but only a fraction have already fallen due.

To view all of this article, please visit this link at Yahoo Finance

FROM THE ORB / MICHAEL BELOTE

The mad rush by policymakers to do something in the wake of the mortgage and foreclosure crises has hit California with a vengeance.

Operating year-round and already the busiest state legislature in the country, California lawmakers have introduced a veritable tsunami of bills designed to address the rise in defaults and foreclosures. The proposals touch virtually every area of real estate, including those affecting lenders, servicers, brokers, foreclosure trustees, asset managers and landlords.

To view all of this article, please visit this link at Mortgage Orb

Broderick Perkins / Realty Times

It’s a lot like dusty prospectors packing up and leaving a mother lode of gold that’s been tapped out.

The massive home building shortfall in California has sparked an exodus of homebuilders leaving regions that were once housing boom towns.

California home builders have long held that the state needs 250,000 new homes every year to keep homes affordable.

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Drops to 46.2 percent in first quarter — level not seen since end of WWII

Associated Press / MSNBC

NEW YORK – The equity Americans have in their most important asset — their homes — has dropped to its lowest level since the end of World War II.

Homeowners’ portion of equity slipped to 46.2 percent in the first quarter from a revised 47.5 percent in the previous quarter. That was the fifth quarter in a row below the 50 percent mark, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.

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Mortgage bankers report hits grim a benchmark in first quarter, showing a record number of homes in jeopardy.

Chris Isidore, CNNMoney.com senior writer

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — More than one million homes are now in foreclosure, the highest rate ever recorded, according to a trade group which warned Thursday that number will continue to climb.

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s first quarter report showed that a record 2.5% of all loans being serviced by its members are now in foreclosure, which works out to about 1.1 million homes. That’s up from the 2% of loans, or about 938,000 homes, that were in foreclosure at the end of 2007.

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CAR (California Association of Realtors)

The percentage of households that could afford to buy an entry-level home in California stood at 44 percent in the first quarter of 2008, compared with 26 percent for the same period a year ago, according to a report released by the CALIFORNIA ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS® (C.A.R.).

C.A.R.’s First-time Buyer Housing Affordability Index (FTB-HAI) measures the percentage of households that can afford to purchase an entry-level home in California. C.A.R. also reports first-time buyer indexes for regions and select counties within the state. The Index is the most fundamental measure of housing
well-being for first-time buyers in the state.
To view all of this article, please visit this link at CAR

Reuters / CNBC

A “credit recession” sparked by the U.S. housing market downturn and excesses in structured finance may last more than two years, and the financial sector will undergo “massive consolidation,” two leading Wall Street strategists said Wednesday.

The fallout from deteriorating subprime mortgages and the broader housing and credit crisis will eventually lead to a healthier market—but not until after a prolonged purging process, Jack Malvey, Lehman Brothers Holdings’s chief global fixed-income strategist, said in New York.

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JEANNINE AVERSA, AP / AOL Money

WASHINGTON (AP) – Home foreclosures and late payments set records over the first three months of the year and are expected to keep rising, stark signs of the housing crisis’ mounting damage to homeowners and the economy.

The latest snapshot of the mortgage market showed that the proportion of mortgages that fell into foreclosure soared to 0.99 percent in the January-through-March period. That surpassed the previous high of 0.83 percent over the last three months in 2007.

The report by the Mortgage Bankers Association also found that more homeowners slipped behind on their monthly payments.

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