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Ahead of next week’s Florida primary, Trulia’s Chief Economist weighs in on why housing matters so much to the remaining Republican presidential hopefuls.
By Jed Kolko (@JedKolko), Trulia’s Chief Economist
Republican presidential candidates have kept housing on the back burner – until now. Next Tuesday’s Florida primary is moving housing front-and-center. Bold new proposals? Don’t be silly. (Hey, I’m an equal-opportunity critic – I said the same about Obama’s State of the Union.) But Romney did hold a housing roundtable, and the candidates are using housing as a scoop for slinging mud at each other. At least that’s something.
Why does the Florida primary thrust housing into the limelight? Four reasons:
1) The housing bust took Florida down.
Prices in most of Florida have fallen by at least 40% since their peak. Along with Nevada, Arizona and inland California, Florida was ground zero for the housing bubble, and now its residents are deep underwater.
2) Florida is in foreclosure purgatory.
It takes more than two years for homes to go through the foreclosure process in Florida, longer than any other state except New York and New Jersey (which have far fewer foreclosures to begin with). That means 14.0% of Florida loans are stuck in foreclosure, compared with 6.3% in Nevada, 3.2% in Arizona, 3.2% in California and 2.7% in Michigan, according to LPS. This keeps Florida’s housing market in limbo and prevents Florida from benefitting from a plan to sell government-owned homes to investors after a foreclosure is complete.
3) Searches and prices are bubbling.
Despite the bust and the foreclosure backlog, demand is stirring in Florida. Our Metro Movers Index shows that far more house hunters are looking to move to Florida – especially to North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, Fort Lauderdale, Cape Coral and West Palm Beach –than they are looking to leave. Thanks, baby boomers and investors. And prices rose more than 2% in the third quarter of 2011 in West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and several other Florida metros.
4) What happens in Florida doesn’t stay in Florida.
Florida is a national housing story. One-third of all the searches for Miami homes on Trulia.com are from people living more than 500 miles away. What’s more, Chicagoans and New Yorkers can’t seem to get enough of Florida. Three of the top 10 long-distance search destinations from Chicago are Florida metros, as are five of the top 10 search destinations from New York. You or someone you love cares about Florida.
The Florida housing market represents the worst of the bubble and hope for recovery. Let’s hope the Republican candidates have something to say about it, because Florida voters will.
]]>REUTERS TV IN DAVOS
Obama administration bolsters homeowner lifeline
A realtor and bank-owned sign is displayed near a house for sale in Phoenix, Arizona, January 4, 2011. REUTERS/Joshua Lott
By Margaret Chadbourn
WASHINGTON | Fri Jan 27, 2012 10:31pm EST
(Reuters) - The Obama administration, in an election-year bid to help distressed homeowners, on Friday expanded its main foreclosure prevention program, and pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive mortgage debt.
The administration said it would extend the life of the Home Affordable Mortgage Program by a year through 2013 and widen it to reach more heavily indebted homeowners.
It also said it would provide incentives to encourage Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-controlled mortgage finance providers, to write down loans, an idea which their regulator has worried would unnecessarily add to the cost of taxpayer bailouts for the two firms.
The regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, withheld final judgment on the proposal, saying it would study it further.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own or guarantee about half of all U.S. home loans, and their participation in principal reduction under HAMP could greatly expand the reach of the $29.9 billion program.
Nearly 11 million Americans are underwater on their mortgages - meaning they owe more than their homes are worth. With some key electoral swing states among the hardest hit by the housing crisis, the sector’s health could become an important factor in November’s elections.
President Barack Obama made clear in his State of the Union address on Tuesday that he would continue to press for aggressive action to help homeowners, and Friday’s announcement was just the first of several on housing initiatives that are expected in coming weeks.
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives last year sought to shut down HAMP, arguing it was ineffective, but the bill died in the Democratic-led Senate.
The HAMP program, which draws from the Treasury Department’s financial bailout fund, pays mortgage servicers to rewrite loan terms to reduce monthly payments.
When the administration launched the program in 2009, it expected as many as 4 million loans would be modified. So far, only about 900,000 households have permanently won new loan terms.
As of the end of last year, only about $3 billion had been spent of the $29 billion set aside for HAMP.
…
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) — Robert Shiller, an economics professor at Yale University and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index, talks about the housing market’s role in the economy and his new book “Finance and the Good Society.” Shiller speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance Midday” at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. (Source: Bloomberg) (Bloomberg)
]]>It sounds like it will make no difference whether Romney or any other Republican candidate (save for Ron Paul) gets the nod.
Would Republicans use Fannie and Freddie to fix the housing crisis?
Posted by Suzy Khimm at 11:02 AM ET, 01/27/2012
During last night’s Republican debate in Florida, Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates to offer their thoughts on the country’s foreclosure crisis: “How would you phase out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Does the private mortgage industry need additional regulation?” Most of the candidates focused on the housing giants as the cause of the housing bust. But they didn’t say whether the big government-sponsored housing giants could be part of the solution to the ongoing crisis.
(AP )
The candidates largely focused on the past: Mitt Romney attacked Fannie and Freddie for being “a big part of why we have the housing crisis in the nation that we have,” then immediately used the issue to attack Gingrich for his ties to Freddie Mac, without indication of how he’d personally handle the housing giants going forward. Rick Santorum and Ron Paul both claimed to have raised pre-crisis warnings about Fannie and Freddie but didn’t directly tackle the question of how they’d deal with the two entities in the context of the current crisis.
Gingrich, at least, offered a straight-forward answer to Blitzer’s original question, proposing to break up Fannie and Freddie into smaller pieces and phase them out gradually “over a five-year period.” In fact, the Obama administration has backed this general idea as well, recognizing that holding cheap mortgages through Fannie and Freddie exposed taxpayers (and the housing market) to too much risk. About a year ago, Treasury laid out a proposal to unwind the housing giants gradually by reducing the pool of qualified borrowers, limiting insurance to times of crisis only or otherwise tightening criteria for underwriting. At this point, the main difference between the White House and Republicans on the issue is not whether to unwind Fannie and Freddie, but how quickly it should be done.
But ultimately, dismantling government support for Fannie and Freddie is mostly intended as a step to prevent the next housing crisis, not to solve the current one. That’s why the pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction as the housing market has continue to remain underwater. Rather than tightening up the criteria for underwriting mortgages through Fannie and Freddie — perhaps a first step in a phase-out — there’s a push to go in the opposite direction in order to give housing a jump-start. In his State of the Union address, Obama suggested that he’d support mass refinancing of mortgages — in part by going through Fannie and Freddie — building off a proposal that Romney’s economic adviser Glenn Hubbard originally put forward.
…
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
Miriam Cruz and her husband, Jose, modified their mortgage but had to add 10 years to it.
ST. CLOUD, Fla. - Gone are the “For Sale’’ signs that sprouted like weeds in yard after yard along the streets of Magnolia Green, one of the scores of subdivisions that rose in recent years in Florida’s once-booming Osceola County.
Realtors no longer put them out, for fear of giving the impression of a blighted neighborhood. In homes that remain occupied, owners such as Jose Cruz lament lost jobs, lost hope, and lost confidence that Republicans are willing to offer a solution.
Instead, the candidates seeking votes in Tuesday’s presidential primary have mostly resorted to bickering about ethics and finger-pointing over the housing crisis, both on the stump and under direct questioning in televised debates.
“They need to answer this: What are they going to do for all the people losing their homes?’’ said Cruz, a part-time administrative aide who struggles to pay a mortgage on a home now worth less than half its $309,000 price six years ago. “They haven’t said anything.’’
…
New group to probe origins of housing bubble
Effort links attorneys general, federal agencies
5:52 PM, Jan. 27, 2012
Written by Brian Tumulty
WASHINGTON — The public should expect to see results within weeks from an effort to document criminal and civil violations at the root of the housing bubble, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Friday.
“Americans lost close to $7.5 trillion in home equity over the last five years,” Schneiderman said. “That’s where the wealth of the working class and the wealth of the middle class was. And that’s why we have to make sure we hold people accountable.”
Schneiderman, New York’s top law enforcement official, wouldn’t predict when any the architects of the housing bubble might go to jail.
“I can’t comment on the specifics of the investigation,” he said.
The investigation is being undertaken as part of a collaboration, announced Friday, among state attorneys general and federal agencies.
Schneiderman joined U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and other officials Friday at a news conference to discuss the formation of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group.
Federal and state officials will target the creation, promotion and sale of the financial instruments that provided fuel for the overheated housing market and the run-up in prices. They will share information and staff while deciding which agency has the most appropriate jurisdiction to pursue criminal or civil charges.
“Mortgage-backed securities were, in many ways ground zero,” Robert Zhuzami, director of enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said at Friday’s news conference.
The promoters of these securities lied, cheated and misled investors, although not all of their actions broke the law, Zhuzami said.
The mortgage-based securities market is dominated by the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), which have been partly blamed for the housing bubble.
But the higher-risk mortgages, including interest-only loans, were packaged in private-label securities issued by firms incorporated as trusts, mainly in New York and Delaware.
Schneiderman and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden have been leading the investigation into these instruments.
President Barack Obama announced during Tuesday’s State of the Union address that he asked Holder to form what he described as “a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general.”
Schneiderman, who serves as co-chairman, said the group will operate separately from negotiations to reach a financial settlement over abuses by the mortgage servicing industry — including making harassing phone calls demanding payments and filing false documents — after the housing market crashed.
Those abuses, involving homeowners who were behind on mortgage payments and faced foreclosure, involved hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, according to Schneiderman. The abusive practices were most concentrated in Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties.
The formation of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group gives Schneiderman and other state attorneys general an assurance the pending settlement won’t pre-empt their investigation of the mortgage securities industry.
…
Florida will be telling.
]]>Not to worry — they have ready access to the printing press technology at ZIRP.
]]>By Kimberly Miller
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 3:18 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27, 2012
The Obama administration announced radical changes to its struggling loan modification program this afternoon aimed at increasing the number of homeowners who can benefit from the plan.
Under a revamped Home Affordable Modification Program, investors will be able get reduced monthly mortgage payments on rental properties, while lenders will get triple the monetary incentives they currently receive to cut homeowner mortgage debt.
The money to pay for the plan will come out of the $29 billion Home Affordable Modification Program budget, of which about $10 billion has already been encumbered.
Administration officals said the plan amendments are part of President Obama’s “We can’t wait campaign,” in which he is making changes to programs he controls without the need for congressional approval.
The changes include the following:
Lenders that agree to write down the principal amounts on underwater mortgages will receive triple the current monetary incentives, up to 63 cents on the dollar.
Incentives will be offered to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to encourage principal reductions. The two entities currently do not allow loan debt reductions. Loan modifications will be available for homes that are occupied by tenants or that the owner intends to rent.
The current plan only allowed modifications on homes the owner lived in. Homeowners who are ineligible for a modification because their home payments are less than 31 percent of their income, but have other debt such as medical bills or a second mortgage, will be considered for an alternative modification plan.
The plan is extended through Dec. 31, 2013, from its original end date of Dec. 31 this year.
]]>Examining the home price boom and its effect on owners, lenders, regulators, realtors and the economy as a whole.
JPMorgan CEO says foreclosure deal threatened
Thu Jan 26, 2012 10:32am EST
(Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said President Barack Obama’s decision to expand investigations into home lending and sales of mortgage securities could stop settlement talks with the states over foreclosure practices.
“It has a pretty good chance of derailing it,” Dimon said in a televised interview with CNBC from Davos, Switzerland on Thursday.
Obama, in his State of the Union address Tuesday, said he has asked his attorney general to create a special unit of prosecutors to expand investigations into home lending and packaging of mortgage-backed securities. It is not clear how the new unit will be different from earlier investigations.
JPMorgan is the largest U.S. bank and one of the larger servicers of mortgage loans. JPMorgan, Bank of America, Wells Fargo & Co, Citigroup and Ally Financial Inc have been in talks with state attorneys general for months about settling allegations of foreclosure abuses.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/us-jpmorgan-foreclosure-idUSTRE80P0UC20120126 - 97k
Maybe Obama could appoint a special unit of prosecuters to investigate why the SEC and all the other regulatory and enforcement bodies that are supposed to ensure honest markets and the rule of law didn’t do their jobs. And still aren’t. Maybe they could investigate how DNC financier and Obama crony Jon Corzine could rip off $1.2 billion from MF Global customer accounts without the slightest prospect of being held accountable under our crony capitalist system. Maybe he could make debasement of the currency and the mass defrauding of taxpayers felonies and actually prosecute offenders and restore public trust in the soundness of our money and financial system.
“how DNC financier and Obama crony Jon Corzine could rip off $1.2 billion from MF Global customer accounts without the slightest prospect of being held accountable”
Paranoid fantasies don’t become true just because you repeat them over and over.
Which part of the statement is incorrect?
“without the slightest prospect of being held accountable”
Now, we don’t know exactly what happened, but it certainly appears that client money was illegally removed from client accounts. If that is what happened, someone will be held accountable. It might be Corzine. It might be someone else in his organization that had the ability to do it without him knowing about it. But this is not the kind of case that prosecutors let go. Prosecutors like to win. When someone hands them the ball with a 40 point lead and 5 minutes left on the clock, they don’t just give up.
Now, the process of playing out those last 5 minutes is going to take a very, very, very long time. Lots of people and every single one of them has lawyered up. Figuring out who to play against whom to get the best case put together is going to take a very long time and they have to sift through all the financial records with experts before they even figure out how to start. It is very unlikely that they can get whoever was really responsible without offering some other person(s) a deal because some of what happened probably happened only verbally. You don’t want to give the wrong person a deal, so you go slowly.
OTOH, there’s an old saying……”Justice delayed is justice denied.”
Somehow, I don’t think anyone who lost their money at MF Global is going to be very happy if it takes 5-10 years to bring charges against these crooks.
This is the problem with our Justice system…….even a slam slam-dunk case, like an assault and battery, can take a year or more before “justice” is meted out, usually some kind of plea bargain with probation.
Steal something worth less than $500? Go ahead, there’s no penalty in doing so, assuming you even get caught. Cops around here don’t even answer call like that anymore. Steal a billion dollars? Even less chance of going to jail.
But God forbid you become a menace to society, by driving 10mph over the speed limit, or file for a divorce. Then you get to contribute to the revenue stream, because you happen to have funds that are transferable to the system, that keeps it afloat.
If we ever revert to frontier justice, the currently configured legal system can take a big chunk of the blame.
Corzine was the CEO of MF Global. It’s his job to know what’s happening in his company.
My money says only a fraction of client funds will ever be returned, and no one in the company will face criminal charges or a serious prosecution over the “diversion” of funds.
It’s a bet then, but we’ll have a good long time to wait before anything happens.
Polly, they’ll get satisfaction but that’s about all. Look at Madoff. The man may be rotting in jail, but most of that money is gone.
Typical Obama:
- All of a sudden… 4 years after the crash… he has the idea to go after the bankers for their criminal behavior… 4 YEARS!!!!… HE WAITED UNTIL A RE-ELECTION YEAR TO PANDER TO STUPID VOTERS…. & act like he’s “doing something”. He put up every roadblock… until now… to thwart any investigation into his banker buddies….
WHY DID HE WAIT UNITL NOW?????????????????
WHY? Because he wants VOTES!!!!
Sad.
Vote his ass out!!!!
no
Well stated! x3 cheers!
And vote who in Timmy ??
Anyone. I’d vote for Charles Manson or Pee-wee Herman over OHbamah. Anyone, except Nancy Pelosi, Chris Dodd, Ben Bernanke, Joe Biden, Jon Corzine, Alan Greenspan, Lloyd Blankfein, Maxine Waters, and a host of other “insider” crooks.
I guess I would exclude anyone working for or supported by the current administration.
“And vote who in Timmy ??”
CRICKETS: Chirp! Chirp!
************R.O.N…… P.A.U.L***********
My dream team would be:
President: Ron Paul
VP: Peter Schiff
’nuff said.
We all know he won’t get the nomination. No chance in hell. At this point it looks like it will be either Romney or Gingrich.
If Bob Dole is only the first in line to cast doubt about Newt’s electability, Romney has it easy.
Florida will be telling.
“HE WAITED UNTIL A RE-ELECTION YEAR TO PANDER TO STUPID VOTERS”
There is never a better time to pander to stupid voters, whose memories are only slightly higher on the evolutionary scale than rodents.
By contrast, what are the GOP candidates doing on the issue of restoring a Rule of Law in the banking sector?
Dimon backs Romney for primary wins
Friday 27th January 2012, 12:49am
DAVOS 2012
JULIET SAMUEL
JP MORGAN chief executive Jamie Dimon believes that Mitt Romney is on course for a victory in this year’s primaries, he said in Davos yesterday.
He also appeared to come close to endorsing the Massachusetts governor, who has been mired in problems over his tax returns, which revealed that he pays an effective tax rate of 13 per cent.
Of Romney’s prospects of victory, Dimon told CNN: “I could be dead wrong. That’s my opinion who the Republican candidate is going to be, because I think he’s an experienced, knowledgeable, successful guy. He clearly doesn’t like talking about himself, or his money very much, but he’ll get through that.”
Dimon, who is known for his outspoken views on politics and changes in banking rules, also said that regulators are not cooperating enough.
“The one thing that I would hope for is that I wish people collaborated more, you know, business, regulators, governments. It’s completely obvious to me that governments, banks, we’re all acting at counter purposes,” he said.
“I was in Berlin and the government, the ECB was saying lend more money and do all these things, and the regulators and examiners and boards are saying, don’t have any more exposure in Europe, what would you want?”
…
“……we’re all acting at counter purposes.”
Yeah. The banksters are stealing everyone blind, and some people don’t like it. Guess they aren’t “Team players”
Really, one wonders what kind of world we’d live in, if these guys got everything they wanted.
“And vote who in Timmy ??”
The only way for us to win this game is to stop playing by their rules.
“JPMorgan CEO says foreclosure deal threatened”
I suspect both the current and former California AGs would agree with him. Perhaps it will now be possible to sort out in court whether document forgery to support foreclosure proceedings is legal or not.
The FT dot com
January 27, 2012 1:49 am
California spurns $15bn in mortgage aid
By Shahien Nasiripour in Washington
California, home to the largest US property market, spurned an offer of roughly $15bn in lower monthly mortgage payments and reduced loan balances for its residents in talks to settle allegations of mortgage-related misdeeds by leading US banks.
Bank of America had guaranteed California borrowers would receive $8bn in mortgage aid, while Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase committed at least $5bn to the state’s distressed homeowners, according to people familiar with the matter, who declined to give exact figures.
California would have received more than half of about $25bn of aid that would be available to borrowers in a nationwide deal under discussion to settle allegations that banks illegally seized homes using faulty documentation.
…
I wonder whether California might come back against the small handful of robo-signing banks with a class action suit based on the actual value of losses to those who were robo-signed out of their homes. I’m guessing for California, the deal might be worth six figures for homes, based on how high home prices were at the peak ($500K+) and how far they have fallen (30%+ = $150K+).
six figures for homesMeant to say, “six figures per home”…
Edit: “…six figures
for homesper home…”Bank of America had guaranteed California borrowers would receive $8bn in mortgage aid, while Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase committed at least $5bn to the state’s distressed homeowners, according to people familiar with the matter, who declined to give exact figures.
If it’s coming from these banksters, I’d be worried about bouncing checks.
“I’d be worried about bouncing checks.”
Not to worry — they have ready access to the printing press technology at ZIRP.
If Jamie Dimon is worried about a deal that’s not getting done to his sastisfaction, that’s a good thing. He should really be worried about getting indicted.
“If Jamie Dimon is worried about a deal that’s not getting done to his sastisfaction, that’s a good thing. He should really be worried about getting indicted.”
+1
Could you throw Angelo and his friends in too?
Sure! Throwing Angelo and his friends in too.
And, hey, boys, sorry about those alligators in the pool that you’re hurtling toward. I tried to lure them out with a nice, fresh bowl of Purina Alligator Chow, but they don’t like that brand.
The Orange One needs to suffer greatly!
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/01/26/A-Brand-New-House-for-1500.aspx#page1
A brand new house for $1500 (that’s not in an inner-city drug gang war zone?). Sign me up!
Given Zimbabwe Ben’s penchant for QE to infinity and beyond to prop up the Wall Street Ponzi, it might be worth visualizing what a currency collapse looks like.
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/120126/iran-rial-trouble-tehran
Advice please from HBBers. My mother was just admitted to a nursing home and has fallen behind on her mortgage. We would like to assume the mortgage, but are unable to catch up her payments. Wells Fargo wants her to quit claim the deed to us and write a hardship letter along with provide our financials. Is this proper procedure? My concern is that a quitclaim will possibly interfere with her medicaid as a property transfer and they will foreclose easier if we have the property. HELP!!!
I answered in bits bucket. You need to see a lawyer pronto. More over in the other thread.
+1. While there are lots of smart people in here, you need sound legal advice.
More would qualify for mortgage relief under new federal plan
By Kimberly Miller
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Posted: 3:18 p.m. Friday, Jan. 27, 2012
The Obama administration announced radical changes to its struggling loan modification program this afternoon aimed at increasing the number of homeowners who can benefit from the plan.
Under a revamped Home Affordable Modification Program, investors will be able get reduced monthly mortgage payments on rental properties, while lenders will get triple the monetary incentives they currently receive to cut homeowner mortgage debt.
The money to pay for the plan will come out of the $29 billion Home Affordable Modification Program budget, of which about $10 billion has already been encumbered.
Administration officals said the plan amendments are part of President Obama’s “We can’t wait campaign,” in which he is making changes to programs he controls without the need for congressional approval.
The changes include the following:
Lenders that agree to write down the principal amounts on underwater mortgages will receive triple the current monetary incentives, up to 63 cents on the dollar.
Incentives will be offered to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to encourage principal reductions. The two entities currently do not allow loan debt reductions. Loan modifications will be available for homes that are occupied by tenants or that the owner intends to rent.
The current plan only allowed modifications on homes the owner lived in. Homeowners who are ineligible for a modification because their home payments are less than 31 percent of their income, but have other debt such as medical bills or a second mortgage, will be considered for an alternative modification plan.
The plan is extended through Dec. 31, 2013, from its original end date of Dec. 31 this year.
Is the financial sector on the brink of undergoing the world’s most deeply penetrating prostate exam? Bend over and enjoy, banksters!
New group to probe origins of housing bubble
Effort links attorneys general, federal agencies
5:52 PM, Jan. 27, 2012
Written by Brian Tumulty
WASHINGTON — The public should expect to see results within weeks from an effort to document criminal and civil violations at the root of the housing bubble, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said Friday.
“Americans lost close to $7.5 trillion in home equity over the last five years,” Schneiderman said. “That’s where the wealth of the working class and the wealth of the middle class was. And that’s why we have to make sure we hold people accountable.”
Schneiderman, New York’s top law enforcement official, wouldn’t predict when any the architects of the housing bubble might go to jail.
“I can’t comment on the specifics of the investigation,” he said.
The investigation is being undertaken as part of a collaboration, announced Friday, among state attorneys general and federal agencies.
Schneiderman joined U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and other officials Friday at a news conference to discuss the formation of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group.
Federal and state officials will target the creation, promotion and sale of the financial instruments that provided fuel for the overheated housing market and the run-up in prices. They will share information and staff while deciding which agency has the most appropriate jurisdiction to pursue criminal or civil charges.
“Mortgage-backed securities were, in many ways ground zero,” Robert Zhuzami, director of enforcement at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said at Friday’s news conference.
The promoters of these securities lied, cheated and misled investors, although not all of their actions broke the law, Zhuzami said.
The mortgage-based securities market is dominated by the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac), which have been partly blamed for the housing bubble.
But the higher-risk mortgages, including interest-only loans, were packaged in private-label securities issued by firms incorporated as trusts, mainly in New York and Delaware.
Schneiderman and Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden have been leading the investigation into these instruments.
President Barack Obama announced during Tuesday’s State of the Union address that he asked Holder to form what he described as “a special unit of federal prosecutors and leading state attorneys general.”
Schneiderman, who serves as co-chairman, said the group will operate separately from negotiations to reach a financial settlement over abuses by the mortgage servicing industry — including making harassing phone calls demanding payments and filing false documents — after the housing market crashed.
Those abuses, involving homeowners who were behind on mortgage payments and faced foreclosure, involved hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers, according to Schneiderman. The abusive practices were most concentrated in Brooklyn, Queens, Nassau and Suffolk counties.
The formation of the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group gives Schneiderman and other state attorneys general an assurance the pending settlement won’t pre-empt their investigation of the mortgage securities industry.
…
Fla. homeowners want solutions, not bickering
GOP rivals have few answers on foreclosure crisis
By Christopher Rowland and Bobby Caina Calvan | Globe Staff
January 28, 2012
David L. Ryan/Globe Staff
Miriam Cruz and her husband, Jose, modified their mortgage but had to add 10 years to it.
ST. CLOUD, Fla. - Gone are the “For Sale’’ signs that sprouted like weeds in yard after yard along the streets of Magnolia Green, one of the scores of subdivisions that rose in recent years in Florida’s once-booming Osceola County.
Realtors no longer put them out, for fear of giving the impression of a blighted neighborhood. In homes that remain occupied, owners such as Jose Cruz lament lost jobs, lost hope, and lost confidence that Republicans are willing to offer a solution.
Instead, the candidates seeking votes in Tuesday’s presidential primary have mostly resorted to bickering about ethics and finger-pointing over the housing crisis, both on the stump and under direct questioning in televised debates.
“They need to answer this: What are they going to do for all the people losing their homes?’’ said Cruz, a part-time administrative aide who struggles to pay a mortgage on a home now worth less than half its $309,000 price six years ago. “They haven’t said anything.’’
…
Will clueless financial leaders serve up more hair-of-the-dog loose mortgage lending in the hopes of a near-term housing bubble reflation? I guess they learned absolutely nothing from their recent experience with the still-effervescent housing bubble.
It sounds like it will make no difference whether Romney or any other Republican candidate (save for Ron Paul) gets the nod.
Would Republicans use Fannie and Freddie to fix the housing crisis?
Posted by Suzy Khimm at 11:02 AM ET, 01/27/2012
During last night’s Republican debate in Florida, Wolf Blitzer asked the candidates to offer their thoughts on the country’s foreclosure crisis: “How would you phase out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Does the private mortgage industry need additional regulation?” Most of the candidates focused on the housing giants as the cause of the housing bust. But they didn’t say whether the big government-sponsored housing giants could be part of the solution to the ongoing crisis.
(AP )
The candidates largely focused on the past: Mitt Romney attacked Fannie and Freddie for being “a big part of why we have the housing crisis in the nation that we have,” then immediately used the issue to attack Gingrich for his ties to Freddie Mac, without indication of how he’d personally handle the housing giants going forward. Rick Santorum and Ron Paul both claimed to have raised pre-crisis warnings about Fannie and Freddie but didn’t directly tackle the question of how they’d deal with the two entities in the context of the current crisis.
Gingrich, at least, offered a straight-forward answer to Blitzer’s original question, proposing to break up Fannie and Freddie into smaller pieces and phase them out gradually “over a five-year period.” In fact, the Obama administration has backed this general idea as well, recognizing that holding cheap mortgages through Fannie and Freddie exposed taxpayers (and the housing market) to too much risk. About a year ago, Treasury laid out a proposal to unwind the housing giants gradually by reducing the pool of qualified borrowers, limiting insurance to times of crisis only or otherwise tightening criteria for underwriting. At this point, the main difference between the White House and Republicans on the issue is not whether to unwind Fannie and Freddie, but how quickly it should be done.
But ultimately, dismantling government support for Fannie and Freddie is mostly intended as a step to prevent the next housing crisis, not to solve the current one. That’s why the pendulum has now swung in the opposite direction as the housing market has continue to remain underwater. Rather than tightening up the criteria for underwriting mortgages through Fannie and Freddie — perhaps a first step in a phase-out — there’s a push to go in the opposite direction in order to give housing a jump-start. In his State of the Union address, Obama suggested that he’d support mass refinancing of mortgages — in part by going through Fannie and Freddie — building off a proposal that Romney’s economic adviser Glenn Hubbard originally put forward.
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Robert Shiller on Housing Market, Economy
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) — Robert Shiller, an economics professor at Yale University and co-creator of the S&P/Case-Shiller home-price index, talks about the housing market’s role in the economy and his new book “Finance and the Good Society.” Shiller speaks with Tom Keene on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance Midday” at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. (Source: Bloomberg) (Bloomberg)
Does Obama have any new housing programs in store to be rolled out between now and November?
REUTERS TV IN DAVOS
Obama administration bolsters homeowner lifeline
A realtor and bank-owned sign is displayed near a house for sale in Phoenix, Arizona, January 4, 2011. REUTERS/Joshua Lott
By Margaret Chadbourn
WASHINGTON | Fri Jan 27, 2012 10:31pm EST
(Reuters) - The Obama administration, in an election-year bid to help distressed homeowners, on Friday expanded its main foreclosure prevention program, and pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to forgive mortgage debt.
The administration said it would extend the life of the Home Affordable Mortgage Program by a year through 2013 and widen it to reach more heavily indebted homeowners.
It also said it would provide incentives to encourage Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-controlled mortgage finance providers, to write down loans, an idea which their regulator has worried would unnecessarily add to the cost of taxpayer bailouts for the two firms.
The regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, withheld final judgment on the proposal, saying it would study it further.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own or guarantee about half of all U.S. home loans, and their participation in principal reduction under HAMP could greatly expand the reach of the $29.9 billion program.
Nearly 11 million Americans are underwater on their mortgages - meaning they owe more than their homes are worth. With some key electoral swing states among the hardest hit by the housing crisis, the sector’s health could become an important factor in November’s elections.
President Barack Obama made clear in his State of the Union address on Tuesday that he would continue to press for aggressive action to help homeowners, and Friday’s announcement was just the first of several on housing initiatives that are expected in coming weeks.
Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives last year sought to shut down HAMP, arguing it was ineffective, but the bill died in the Democratic-led Senate.
The HAMP program, which draws from the Treasury Department’s financial bailout fund, pays mortgage servicers to rewrite loan terms to reduce monthly payments.
When the administration launched the program in 2009, it expected as many as 4 million loans would be modified. So far, only about 900,000 households have permanently won new loan terms.
As of the end of last year, only about $3 billion had been spent of the $29 billion set aside for HAMP.
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1/27/2012 @ 1:38AM
If It’s Florida, It Must Be Housing
Ahead of next week’s Florida primary, Trulia’s Chief Economist weighs in on why housing matters so much to the remaining Republican presidential hopefuls.
By Jed Kolko (@JedKolko), Trulia’s Chief Economist
Republican presidential candidates have kept housing on the back burner – until now. Next Tuesday’s Florida primary is moving housing front-and-center. Bold new proposals? Don’t be silly. (Hey, I’m an equal-opportunity critic – I said the same about Obama’s State of the Union.) But Romney did hold a housing roundtable, and the candidates are using housing as a scoop for slinging mud at each other. At least that’s something.
Why does the Florida primary thrust housing into the limelight? Four reasons:
1) The housing bust took Florida down.
Prices in most of Florida have fallen by at least 40% since their peak. Along with Nevada, Arizona and inland California, Florida was ground zero for the housing bubble, and now its residents are deep underwater.
2) Florida is in foreclosure purgatory.
It takes more than two years for homes to go through the foreclosure process in Florida, longer than any other state except New York and New Jersey (which have far fewer foreclosures to begin with). That means 14.0% of Florida loans are stuck in foreclosure, compared with 6.3% in Nevada, 3.2% in Arizona, 3.2% in California and 2.7% in Michigan, according to LPS. This keeps Florida’s housing market in limbo and prevents Florida from benefitting from a plan to sell government-owned homes to investors after a foreclosure is complete.
3) Searches and prices are bubbling.
Despite the bust and the foreclosure backlog, demand is stirring in Florida. Our Metro Movers Index shows that far more house hunters are looking to move to Florida – especially to North Port-Bradenton-Sarasota, Fort Lauderdale, Cape Coral and West Palm Beach –than they are looking to leave. Thanks, baby boomers and investors. And prices rose more than 2% in the third quarter of 2011 in West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and several other Florida metros.
4) What happens in Florida doesn’t stay in Florida.
Florida is a national housing story. One-third of all the searches for Miami homes on Trulia.com are from people living more than 500 miles away. What’s more, Chicagoans and New Yorkers can’t seem to get enough of Florida. Three of the top 10 long-distance search destinations from Chicago are Florida metros, as are five of the top 10 search destinations from New York. You or someone you love cares about Florida.
The Florida housing market represents the worst of the bubble and hope for recovery. Let’s hope the Republican candidates have something to say about it, because Florida voters will.