Despite falling delinquency rates among lenders as a whole, delinquencies increased for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac borrowers, especially in Florida. Coincidentally, CoreLogic announced today Florida leads the nation in the size of its foreclosure inventory. Read More »

As the President and Congress attempt to avoid the "fiscal cliff" scheduled to take effect a week from today, most leading housing economists and housing experts believe housing prices won’t suffer if the mortgage interest deduction were limited to mortgages of $500,000 or less and eliminated for interest paid on second mortgages for second homes, a possibility in the final negotiations to avoid the fiscal cliff. Read More »

As the nation’s real estate economy has evolved and slowly improved over the past two and a half years, the geography of almost every leading metric measuring the health of local housing markets has changed to reflect local economic trends and conditions except the one that many economists and policy makers consider to be critical to the national economic recovery. Read More »

While full service banks and other traditional mortgage lenders have watched their mortgage businesses decline in recent years, credit unions have doubled their market share since 2009 and originated 8 percent of all mortgages in the second half of 2012. Read More »

It might be harder to get a loan today, but it costs a little less to close one than it did a year ago because lenders are estimating closing costs netter, according opt the latest annual survey of closing costs by Bankrate. Read More »

Even as demand for mortgages declined with the expiration of homebuyer tax credit in the third quarter, a small number of banks tightened standards on both prime and nontraditional mortgage loans, reversing a slight net easing reported in the second quarter. Read More »