|
|
Updated at 1:30 p.m.
There’s a sizable portion of the American public that’s against bailing out underwater American homeowners under any circumstances. That sentiment was most eloquently summed up by CNBC’s Rick Santelli in 2009. His fiery speech on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade is credited with spurring the Tea Party movement and helping coalesce forces against government bailouts of all kinds.
WASHINGTON — Average U.S. rates for 30-year and 15-year fixed mortgages fell to fresh record lows this week, offering more incentive for Americans to buy or refinance homes. Mortgage buyer Freddie Mac said Thursday that the rate on the 30-year loan fell to 3.84 percent, the lowest since long-term mortgages began in the 1950s. That’s [...]
WASHINGTON (AP) — Government-controlled mortgage giant Freddie Mac is requesting $19 million in additional federal aid after posting a loss for the first quarter of this year. The requested amount is less than the $146 million that Freddie received from the government for the fourth quarter of 2011. The company received $7.6 billion for all [...]
The conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac believes that the best way to keep people in their homes — and save taxpayers money — is a strategy called “principal forbearance.” Not everybody agrees.
DeMarco took to the Brookings Institute to defend himself against his critics, who argue he is hurting the economy by not backing principal reductions for underwater homeowners.
One of the many cans being kicked down Washington’s boulevards these days is the government conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, Congress and the Bush administration created the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and subsequently put Fannie and Freddie into conservatorship under its authority.
It’s wild to think that a strawberry picker who earned $15,000 qualified for a $720,000 mortgage in 2005. But it’s just as ridiculous to think that a buyer with a credit score of 720 and who can put 20% down may not have qualified for a loan in 2010. After the subprime mess of 2008, [...]
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 [...]
The non-profit investigative journalism organization ProPublica, in cooperation with National Public Radio, published a story yesterday revealing that Freddie Mac, the government-owned mortgage financier, has recently been purchasing derivatives that would make the company money “if homeowners stay trapped in expensive mortgages with interest rates well above current rates.” The story, titled “Freddie Mac Bets Against [...]
Perhaps the single biggest headwind the American economy faces, rivaled only by unemployment, is the dismal housing market. American’s biggest source of wealth has been decimated over the past six years, so it was no surprise that President Obama, in his state of the union speech, promised responsible homeowners the chance to refinance and “save [...]
