15 year, Fixed Rate Mortgages Gaining Popularity

Home buyers and home owners who are refinancing are increasingly enthusiastic about 15-year, fixed-rate mortgages.

Originations of 15-year mortgages at Wells Fargo & Co. are up 55 percent through November compared to a year ago. At J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., 20 percent of refinances are 15-year loans, up 10 percent in 2008.

One reason is that rates on 15-year fixed-rate conforming mortgages averaged 4.46 percent in early December, according to HSH Associates in Pompton Plains, N.J.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, Ruth Simon (12/09/2009)

Foreclosures Decline for Fourth-Straight Month

Foreclosures declined 8 percent in November compared with October, but were still up 18 percent from November 2008.

This was the fourth-straight month that U.S. foreclosures have declined since hitting an all-time high in July, according to online foreclosure marketer RealtyTrac.

Default notices, an indicator of coming foreclosures, also were down 8 percent from October, but up 22 percent from November 2008. Bank repossessions were flat from the previous month and down 2 percent from November 2008.

"We don't really believe the underlying problems have been resolved," said Rick Sharga, senior vice president for RealtyTrac. Many borrowers, he told the Associated Press, "simply aren't going to qualify" for government and mortgage servicer help.

States with the highest foreclosure rates are:

Nevada

Florida

California

Arizona

Idaho

Michigan

Illinois

Utah

Maryland

New Jersey

Four states account for more than 50 percent of actual foreclosures: California, Florida, Illinois, and Michigan.

Source: RealtyTrac, (12/10/2009)

Banks Start to Embrace Short Sales

Daily Real Estate News

December 4, 2009


Banks Start to Embrace Short Sales

Even before the government put pressure on them to embrace short sales, more banks were starting to take their lumps, do the short-sale deals and move on.

Three years into the housing meltdown, short sales have tripled to 40,000 in the first six months of 2009, compared to the same time period a year ago, according to data from the Office of Thrift Supervision and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.

Wells Fargo, Bank of America Corp., and JPMorgan Chase & Co. this year have hired and trained more staff to handle short sales and also developed software for expediting them.

“It’s really finally dawning on banks that they’re better off with a short sale,” said Richard Green, director of the Lusk Center for Real Estate at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “I think banks were in denial.”

Source: Bloomberg, John Gittelsohn and Margaret Collins (12/4/2009)