Loan Think

If you need to refinance or buy a home, Quicken Home Loans is offering a 30-year FRM at 4.4% at 0.25 points. It sounds like a good deal to me and I'm sure other lenders will match that rate. Why are rates so low?

Ask any mortgage banker about compliance and chances are he or she can quickly rattle off how much this task is costing his firm each year.

I was riding the New York City Subway to work one recent morning, when a father and his approximately five-year-old son sat across from me.

Recently as I chaired the SourceMedia Buying and Selling Distressed Mortgage Portfolios Forum in New York City, I was thinking about this huge market and how it hasn't quite opened up wide yet. But surely it is in the process of doing so.

Phil Sotelo, the owner of Realty Executives Sotelo & Associates was arrested for mortgage fraud for recording phony documents at a county office and refused to leave his north Modesto home after it was sold at public auction, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.

In the wake of a purported debt deal, rates are falling, which is usually good news for both consumers and mortgage bankers. But how much new business will result from a 2.74% yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury? (Does a debt downgrade even matter?)

We have a debt deal, but let's not kid ourselves: the mortgage and housing finance industries have been forever changed the past three years and one likely victim will be the mortgage interest deduction. President Obama, a Democrat, has no qualms about killing or whittling down the MID. (He's not too keen on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac either.)

How many of you out there have been thinking that America is a little bit like a consumer who's considering a 'strategic default' on his home mortgage? Think about it for a moment: a strategic default candidate is employed but looks at his mortgage debt and says, "The house is underwater by $200k, so why just not walk and pay rent across town?" (Only crazy people don't pay the mortgage, right?)

By now, all the pundits and most of the analysts on Wall Street believe a debt deal will get done by Monday morning, so the next question is the most obvious: where do we go economically from here? Politically, blood is in the water and voters from both parties (and independents) will pull the lever accordingly in November 2012.

I’ve just finished my third (yes, No. 3) midlife crisis! I spent 30 days in Europe last month—10 days in Italy and 20 days in Greece! It has always been a dream of mine to not to be just another typical tourist—I wanted to spend three or four days in one location, getting to know each city, its people, how they lived and worked from day to day.