Newsdesk | February 17, 2012

 

Top News Home buying: Most affordable in decades CNNMoney.com - Thanks to continued declines in home prices and rock-bottom mortgage rates, the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index hit a record level of affordability. According to the... Obama Proposes Extending Tax Waiver on Mortgage Debt Forgiveness DSNews.com - Obama’s FY2013 budget proposal includes an extension of the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007. The Act ensures that homeowners who received principal reductions or other forms of debt forgiveness... Government extends deadline for foreclosure reviews USA Today - auditors are sample-checking 100,000 other foreclosure cases, Hubbard says. The settlement covers people who were harmed in foreclosures in 2009 and 2010, if their servicer is part of the settlement. More information is at independentforeclosurereview.com. With the $25 billion... Citigroup pays $158 million in mortgage fraud pact Reuters - Citigroup Inc has agreed to pay $158.3 million to settle U.S. civil claims that it defrauded the government into insuring thousands of risky home loans made by its CitiMortgage unit.

Market News Foreclosures up for the month, down from last year DSNews.com - Foreclosure activity increased 3 percent in January, but is still down 10 percent compared to a year ago in January 2011, according to the U.S. Foreclosure Market Report released by RealtyTrac Thursday. Purchase Applications Decrease in Latest MBA Weekly Survey Mortgage Bankers Association - Mortgage applications decreased 1.0 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending February 10, 2012... Rate on 30-year mortgage stays at record 3.87% USA Today - The low rates have done little to boost the struggling housing market. Rates have been below 5% for all but two weeks in the past year. Yet few people can qualify for the rates and many of those who can have...

Technology News Apple unveils new Mac OS X Mountain Lion USA Today - When Apple launched Mac OS X Lion last July, it brought the Macintosh operating system ever closer to the experience folks had gotten accustomed to on the iPad and iPhone. Now, just seven months later, Apple today unveils OS X Mountain Lion, an early...

Other News Homebuilder optimism rises for fifth straight month USA Today - U.S. homebuilders are gradually growing more optimistic about the depressed housing market and believe homes sales could pick up sharply at the beginning of 2012. The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo index rose for a fifth... Reminder: 3.8% Tax is Not a Transfer Tax on Real Estate REALTOR Magazine - That rumor is not true; NAR has material available to you to explain how that 3.8 percent tax works. It’s a tax on a very narrow band of investment income for high-wealth households (those... Is bankruptcy an option with reverse mortgage? Bankrate.com - Dear Bankruptcy Adviser, If somebody has a reverse mortgage, could he file for bankruptcy and still keep the house -- of course meeting all the other obligations to the mortgagor? -- John Dear John, This is an excellent question.