President Obama held a rally yesterday in Falls Church, Virginia, where he provided more details concerning his plan, mentioned briefly in his state of the union speech, to stabilize the housing market. The centerpiece of the plan is a new program that would expand HARP to many homeowners whose loans are not backed by government-owned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, enabling them to refinance even if they don’t qualify under traditional lending standards.
The Federal Housing Administration, which has been propping up the residential real estate market in a major way, announced this morning that it would tighten its lending standards. The FHA has been doing a lot to clean up its books—which do need cleaning up. Raising down payment standards, though, isn’t expected to have much of an [...]
There’s been a lot of chatter recently about whether or not the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) is going to need a bailout. The FHA insures—but does not write—home loans, and thanks to the housing bust, the agency has had to dip a little further into its reserves than it probably would have liked to. That [...]
