As many as 10 million Americans are believed to have lost their homes because of the financial crisis that erupted a decade ago, according to the St. Louis Federal Reserve. The crisis wiped out almost $8 trillion in household stock-related wealth and $6 trillion in home value after banks, mortgage lenders and financial companies provided loans to speculators, house flippers and people who couldn't Continue Reading

Ten years after the financial crisis, Brookings Center on Regulations and Markets [1] looks back on the measures taken in the years since designed to prevent another crisis, both nationally and globally. Michael Calhoun, President of the Brooking Center for Responsible Lending, notes in his piece titled “Lessons From the Financial Crisis” that an important takeaway from the crisis was the role the Continue Reading

As mortgages that went delinquent because of last year’s catastrophic hurricanes continued to cure, the U.S. delinquency rate plummeted to its lowest point since March 2006, according to Black Knight’s First Look for July, which parses monthly mortgage performance data for foreclosures and delinquencies. Simultaneous to that, foreclosure starts ticked up 11 percent over June’s dramatic 17-year Continue Reading

Decision closes U.S. probe into actions that contributed to financial meltdown Ten years after faulty mortgages upended the global financial system, Wells Fargo & Co. agreed to pay $2.09 billion to settle a U.S. investigation into its creation and sale of loans that contributed to the disaster. The long-anticipated penalty, announced Wednesday, is in line with what some analysts had Continue Reading

•Housing demand fell 9.6 percent in June, compared with June 2017, according to a monthly index from Redfin. That is the largest decline since April 2016. •The number of people requesting home tours fell 6.1 percent annually in June. •While supply declined overall, Redfin noted a large increase in listings in some of the most supply-starved markets, which is where home prices have overheated Continue Reading

Total loan modifications equaled total liquidations in June, according to a snapshot of the housing market published by the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. Citing a report by Hope Now, the center’s Monthly Chartbook indicated that around 8.3 million borrowers had received a loan modification since the third quarter of 2007 compared with around 8.6 million liquidations in the same Continue Reading

Consumer debt is approaching new highs with the current household debt set to be $1 trillion above the peak debt level of 2008, by the end of June 2018, according to a study by LendingTree. In the second quarter, consumer debt levels are approaching $15.7 trillion compared with $14.7 trillion a decade ago, the study found. Yet, mortgages make up a small part of it. Unlike the last high in 2008, Continue Reading

Mortgage delinquencies defied several trends in April, according to the latest First Look at the month’s mortgage performance data from Black Knight, Inc. April is typically a month that sees an increase in mortgage delinquencies. In fact, historically, delinquencies have increased during April 85 percent of the time, according to Black Knight. Not so for this year, however—in April 2018, Black Continue Reading

The delinquency rate for mortgages on one-to-four-unit residential properties fell to a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.63 percent at the end of the first quarter, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). This marks a 54-basis-point drop from the fourth quarter and an eight-basis-point decline from one year earlier. However, the share of home loans on which foreclosure Continue Reading

The notion of buying a home with no money down is understandably alluring. But what looks sexy in a lender’s advertisement does not always translate into what is best for your financial well-being. What is a zero-down loan? Also known as 100 percent financing, zero-down loans require no down payment to purchase a home. For those with little to no cash in savings, these loans are touted as a Continue Reading