Tag Archives: Mortgage Debt

Chase's Mortgage Cash Back rewards program allows customers who have both their mortgage and personal checking account with Chase to earn up to $500 annually. Since the program began four years ago, Chase has paid out $87 million to more than 368,000 homeowners. This December, Chase will be distributing $4 million in Cash Back rewards to customers, just in time for the holidays.

According to Fannie Mae's November National Housing Survey, positive momentum in the housing market has slowed as Americans remain cautious about their personal finances and the overall state of the economy. Nearly two-thirds of those surveyed believe the economy is on the wrong track. Within the next year, 22 percent expect their personal finances to worsen and only 45 percent expect home prices to increase.

Inventories of homes for sale have been slow to bounce back since the 2007-09 recession, despite steady price appreciation since January 2012. Normally, higher prices reflect robust sales. But lately, prices have been rising even though sales remain stuck at relatively low levels, largely due to a lack of inventory. So why are there so few homes for sale? Two Fed economists examine the many factors affecting today's inventory levels.

The percentage of homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth has declined to less than 12 percent as of the third quarter of this year, according to Lender Processing Services' (LPS) Mortgage Monitor report. While the increasing number of homeowners rising above water is good news for the market, LPS detects some tumultuous seas ahead as a cloud of problem home equity loans forms on the horizon.

Perhaps you've known someone who raised money for a documentary or civic project by making an appeal through crowdfunding on the Internet. Now, the concept of pooled resources is being used as an investment vehicle offering equity in homeownership to investors and loan assistance to selected prospective homeowners.

While rising home prices have lifted many underwater homeowners to positions of positive equity, the real estate information and analytics provider DataQuick warns tight credit will still preclude many traditional buyers from the market. Instead, investors will continue to carry an outsized portion of the purchase market for the foreseeable future, according to DataQuick.

Independent mortgage bankers are a growing segment and they're poised to take over even more market share as larger institutions trim their mortgage businesses. The five biggest banks were responsible for 53.2 percent of new mortgage activity in the United States in 2012, down from nearly two-thirds in 2010. According to a recent FBR Capital Markets forecast, that share could shrink to 40 percent by 2014.

To address widespread negative equity, at least 15 cities and counties are considering using eminent domain to seize underwater homes and lower borrowers' mortgage principal balances, according to the Urban Institute. The institute conducted a study to see what commonalities these communities share and found that all 15 suffer from high levels of poverty and unemployment, stagnant incomes, and low housing prices.

A former U.S. Bank executive plead guilty to receiving bribes from Oxford Collection Agency over the course of several years in exchange for business, according to the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Wilbur Tate III served as the assistant VP at U.S. Bank from January 2004 through February 2011. He allegedly accepted bribes from Oxford starting in 2008--bribes which began as expensive cigars and escalated to cash payments disguised in cigar boxes.

Fast-paced price increases helped bring 1.4 million homeowners to the surface in the third quarter as their home values finally clipped their equity, according to the latest Negative Equity Report from Zillow. The third-quarter drop in negative equity was the largest on record for Zillow, dating back to early 2011. The negative equity rate now stands at 21 percent, down about one-third from a peak of 31.4 percent.