FDIC Closes Four More Lenders

DSNews  reports the closure of four more lending banks: La Jolla Bank, FSB in La Jolla, California; George Washington Savings Bank, Orland Park, Illinois; Marco Community Bank, Marco Island, Florida; and The La Coste National Bank, Lacoste, Texas. This brings the number of failures on the FDIC list to 20 for this year. Nearly all [...]

Case Study: “Destroying Faith in the U.S. Mortgage Backed Security System”

I found this lawsuit to be a perfect case study in what I would title “ How to Destroy Faith in the U.S. Mortgage Backed Security [...]

Counties Charge Transfer Tax on Forgiven Debt

Similar to County Assessors using a pre-foreclosure sale price for assessed value,  Jurisdictions in Maryland are struggling with the issue of how to calculate transfer taxes on short sales, stating that transfer taxes on short sales are not to be calculated on the sales price, but rather on the sales price PLUS the amount of [...]

Real Estate Outlook for 2010

US News & World Report has an excellent article on the outlook for Real Estate in 2010. Read it here. In the author’s opinion, interest rates along coupled with lower housing prices should be key to an economic return in 2010 for real estate. Particularly coupled with federal money for first time homebuyers.  After all, [...]

Foreclosure Outlook for 2010

Residential mortgage numbers in default are higher than they have been since the Great Depression. Realty Trac, publisher of the country’s largest database of foreclosure activity, estimates that the numbers will continue to increase through the third quarter of 2010 due to high unemployment rates and the reset of interest rates on large groups of [...]

MGIC Sued by B of A

Bank of America says MGIC denied claims based on “unreasonable interpretations” of its policies. Bank of America’s lawsuit notes that MGIC reaped “hundreds of millions of dollars” [...]