Category Archives: Real estate

Ilargi: The Illusionary Economy Revives Helocs, the Home ATM

Yves here. Ilargi is duly skeptical of the enthusiastic financial press response to an increase in home equity liquidation, um, borrowing using home equity lines of credit, or Helocs. While the party line is that this development reflects an rise in home equity and increased consumer confidence, Ilargi stresses that prices appreciation that the Fed has created, the Fed can also take away. I have to wonder how many of these Heloc borrowers are doing so out of necessity or near-desperation.

Wolf Richter: Housing Bubble 2 Already Collapsing for the 99%

One of the side effects of QE is that housing prices and sales levels for the top 1% in most markets are strong, while activity in the rest of the market is falling.

Wolf Richter: This Chart Is The Fate of Housing In America As Student Loans Bankrupt A Whole Generation

Student loans are a millstone that is crushing college educated young adults, and with them, key parts of the economy.

Blackstone Unit Sued Over Slum-Like Condition of Single Family Home Rental

How Blackstone’ single family home rental business, Invitation Homes, is proving to be more slumlord than landlord.

Wolf Richter: Implosion of Housing Bubble 2 Hits Six Cities in the West

Last time, all that craziness was called a “housing bubble” with hindsight. This time, it’s called a “housing recovery.”

GSE Reform Dead for Now

I’m a little surprised at the overly coded reporting at the New York Times and particularly the Wall Street Journal, where Nick Timiraos provides top-notch coverage on the mortgage beat, on the implications of the failure of a widely-touted, Administration-backed GSE reform bill to get out of the Senate Banking Committee. Basically, it confirms what I’ve long believed but refrained from writing about, namely, that government sponsored enterprise, aka, GSE reform, was not going to get done in this session of Congress.

“Independent” Foreclosure Review Error Rate Vastly Higher Than Previously Admitted

At this point, it seems hard to add insult to injury, given the terrible track record of the OCC Independent Foreclosure Reviews. But it’s nevertheless been done.

Quelle Surprise! Ginnie Mae Says Bank of America Has Lots of Servicing Documents Missing; MERS Also in Hot Water

An article by Kate Berry in American Banker earlier this week hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves. Anyone who was paying attention to the mortgage beat in 2010 through 2012 knew that mortgage securitization originators and servicers were playing fast and loose with critical documents like mortgage notes because they couldn’t be bothered to observe […]

Predatory Equity: How Private Equity Came to New York’s Rental Market

Private equity firms have been hoovering up houses all over the US to convert into rentals. But they were active in the New York City rental market before their big buying spree, and that experience gives a window on how they are likely to behave as landlords.

Slumlord Wannabe Blackstone Violates Local Housing Laws by Making Tenants Maintain Rentals

The yawning gap between private equity landlord sales talk and what they are delivering is finally being exposed.

Chris Whalen Goes Off the Deep End, Issues Error-Filled Screed in Defense of Mortgage Servicers

I once had a good opinion of bank analyst Chris Whalen, despite having some reservations about him. But his error-filled screed against mortgage servicing regulations means he can no longer be taken seriously on the subject of banking. Whalen has become a textbook illustration of the Upton Sinclair saying, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

How Banks Fleece Heirs on Reverse Mortgages

Never underestimate the willingness of banks to find new and creative ways to cheat customers, particularly when big bucks are at stake.

Democracy Now Discusses Wells Fargo Foreclosure Document Fabrication Manual

It’s good to see that a lawsuit providing critical new evidence of systematic foreclosure abuses is getting the attention it warrants.

Just 83,000 Homeowners Get First-Lien Principal Reductions from National Mortgage Settlement, 90 Percent Less Than Promised

Yesterday, the National Mortgage Settlement monitor, Joseph Smith, released his final crediting reports, confirming that all five banks (Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan Chase and Ally, now known after bankruptcy as Residential Capital, or ResCap) have now satisfied the consumer relief portion of the foreclosure fraud settlement. The banks were required to spend $20 billion in “credited” relief (some actions received less than a dollar-for-dollar credit). Smith exults that the gross relief provided totaled over $50 billion, and that “more than 600,000 families received some form of relief.”

What the mainstream media reports on this don’t tell you is that the $50 billion number is wildly inflated: for example, it includes $12 billion in deficiency waivers in non-recourse states, which the IRS confirmed have no value whatsoever. But I didn’t know just how inflated these numbers were, and how empty the promises, until I went through them.

Why the Justice Department Inspector General Report on Mortgage Fraud Matters

Hello, folks! As Yves is off explaining the world to Washington, I’m manning the controls for a couple days.

This allows me to ensure that NC has that whole Justice Department IG report on mortgage fraud covered. I know that Yves heaved the written equivalent of a sigh at the news, and she wasn’t wrong. Nothing tangible is likely to happen for the borrowers victimized by the abusive practices that DoJ willfully neglected to prosecute. And there’s surely a seat being kept warm at Covington & Burling for Eric Holder’s post-government career; this won’t hurt him a bit.

But because I don’t feel the coverage so far has plumbed the depths of this corruption, and because it’s still happening, it’s not worth going silent just yet. It’s probably spitting into the wind, yes, but I’ve got the time and the spit, so I want to note a few things.