Mortgage articles from the post:

As the housing market crumbles, homeowners are worried about mortgage payments and sellers are worried about slumping prices - but the companies that insure their loans are worrying about their very survival in the face of billions of dollars in claims.

Read the full article: Mortgage insurers feeling housing slump

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FHA Secure is being touted as the solution to the maddening mortgage adjustable rate mortgage crisis. It remains to be seen if a government loan will really solve the mortgage crisis or if the crisis was really a spend like there's no tomorrow attitude.

A new federal loan program designed to help borrowers cope with rising payments on adjustable-rate mortgages is kicking into gear.

An estimated 80,000 borrowers nationally are expected to take advantage of the FHASecure loan program, said Ben Johnson, director of the Denver Homeownership Center with the Federal Housing Administration.

Another 160,000 or so are expected to use other FHA loans to escape their unaffordable mortgages.

The first Colorado borrowers in the program should start receiving their new loans in early November.

Critics say the program doesn't go far enough to help homeowners.

FHASecure loans, unveiled by President Bush in August, are designed to shift borrowers who can't afford higher payments on their ARMs into more traditional FHA-backed loans.

But they aren't a shoo-in. Borrowers facing a reset must have stayed current on their payments for at least six months, although those who have fallen behind because of a reset to a higher interest rate are eligible.

Loans are underwritten to FHA standards, which limits how much can be financed. In Denver-Aurora, the FHA cap is $308,370.

The FHA will insure a mortgage for up to 97 percent of a home's appraised value. If the borrower can't come up with the down payment or the loan is worth more than the home, the current mortgage provider must be willing to accept a second mortgage for the difference, including any prepayment penalties or other fees.

Borrowers must also demonstrate an employment history and that they can afford the payments on the new loan, based on an interest rate that will come in somewhere between the initial rate offered on the ARM and the higher adjusted rate.

Critics charge that FHASecure and other administration efforts represent a Band-Aid on an open wound. There were 223,538 foreclosure filings in the U.S. in September, according to RealtyTrac.

"Unfortunately, the bottom is falling out of our housing market much more quickly than the administration is willing to stem the tide of foreclosures," Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said Wednesday.

Schumer was responding to an announcement Wednesday by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. of a new alliance with mortgage servicers, housing counselors and government agencies to help an estimated 2 million borrowers who face higher payments on their ARMs - not all of whom would qualify for FHASecure loans.

"A combination of stagnant or falling house prices, low- down-payment mortgages and resetting adjustable-rate mortgage rates are creating real challenges for many American homeowners," Paulson said in a statement.

The Hope Now program will work to establish best practices in housing counseling and launch a mass-mail marketing campaign next month to reach struggling borrowers before they fall off a cliff.

As it reaches out to help borrowers, the FHA also has cracked down on seller-financed assistance programs.

The programs, which claimed to be charities, inflated home sales prices, allowing the minimal 2 percent to 3 percent down payments to be wrapped back into the FHA loans and increasing the risk to buyers and the government.

Source: Denver Post

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I have several friends who live in the DU area. Why? It reminds them of the East Coast:

With wide streets lined with mature trees and elegant homes set on deep lots, prices in University Park - or Observatory Park, as newer residents call it - have skyrocketed in recent years as people discover its storybook feel and prime location.

Read more: DU neighborhood worth observation

Want to live there? With average prices hovering around a cool half mill fughettaboutit!

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Mortgage back securities are often affected by the weekly jobs reports so when August was initially slated to have a 4k job loss and instead it was a 89k job gain, rates increased. We need to improve the math standards at the Dept of Labor.Read more: Jobs report gives market bounce, but rate-cut bets could lose air

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Just recently Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had their fare share of accounting scandals. Now they're seen as the cover to the mortgage cesspool.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies, would be allowed to expand their $1.5 trillion mortgage portfolio to buy subprime loans under a Democratic plan to help struggling borrowers.

Read the full article: Dems seek subprime help from Fannie and Freddie

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Real estate article from the Denver Post:

An index that forecasts near-term home sales fell in August to a record low as would- be homebuyers had difficulty getting mortgages.

Read the full article: Pending-home-sales index at record low

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According to this article from the Denver Post, it's impact is quite severe on commercial real estate:

The mortgage meltdown and resulting credit crunch that have rocked the housing market nationwide are reaching their tentacles into commercial real estate.

In metro Denver, several office transactions have fallen through because of the tightened credit markets. The World Trade Center downtown is back on the market after a contract with Broadway Capital Partners fell through; and International Capital Partners pulled out of a deal to buy Plaza Quebec in Englewood, according to people in the commercial real-estate industry.

Read the full article: Credit crunch widens locally

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...they closed the Inferno, a restaurant during the day and a bar at night, located beneath the lift ticket counter. Intrawest (the NY Yankees of the resort industry) is moving in and doing what they do best:

The arrival of ski-giant Intrawest in this already bustling ski town was like adding gasoline to the fire of furious development already underway.

Read the full article: Reshaping Steamboat Springs

Check out the Steamboat Springs Average Price recent explosion:

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As the weather and the leaves turn, for some reason the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News have had a blitzkrieg of real estate and mortgage articles. This latest one called, Commission remission regarding the the declining commission for real estate agents is a doozy.

Commission rates last year averaged 5.2 percent nationwide, according to Littleton-based Real Trends newsletter, whereas in 1991 that number came in at about 6.1 percent.

That's 5.2% of your home price. So if your house sells for $250,000 or $500,000, you'll be shelling out 5.2% of that amount. However, the article discusses that real estate agents are willing to negotiate their commissions:

...real estate clients can haggle over more than just a home's asking price. They might just work with their Realtor to find a mutually agreed upon commission rate too.

What makes this article somewhat interesting is this quote:

Too many mortgage lenders will do anything to get a loan through...

Actually once I read that quote, I went to read the entire article.

What do I think? If a real estate agent charges 6% to sell your home and sucks, fire him/her. If they charge 4.6% and kicks ass, refer them to everyone you know.

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When toys have lead, we blame China. When housing has lead, we blame landlords:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proposing civil penalties against five landlords in Colorado and one in Utah for not including lead warnings as part of their leases.

Read the full article:

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