Mortgage Players Look to Soften Bill !!

As Congress moves to finalize new financial regulations, the mortgage industry is working to soften a series of provisions that reshape how most Americans obtain home loans. This was according to the Wall Street Journal.

The provisions in the legislation seek to eliminate questionable practices that proliferated during the housing boom by outlining clear underwriting standards, holding lenders more responsible for loans, and changing the way loan originators are paid. In addition, consumers would get new rights to seek damages when the mortgage process goes awry, according to The Journal.

Read more at-http://bit.ly/aPVd4g (The Wall Street Journal)

Texas mortgage delinquencies drop

Less than 9 percent of Texas homeowners missed a mortgage payment in the first quarter of 2010, according to first-quarter data from the Texas Mortgage Bankers Association.

Texas’ 8.7 percent delinquency rate is down from 10.3 percent one year ago. Nationwide, mortgage delinquencies increased about 1 percent to 10.1 percent.

Just more than 2 percent of Texas mortgages were in foreclosure proceedings at the end of the first quarter, the group said. The national foreclosure rate is 4.6 percent, said Scott Norman, president of the Texas Mortgage Bankers Association.

The above article appeared in the bizjournals of Atlanta and can be accessed @-http://dallas.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2010/05/17/daily35.html

Georgia foreclosure rate rises 31%

Georgia had the sixth-highest rate of foreclosures in America in May, according to RealtyTrac’s monthly foreclosure report-

The state had 13,778 foreclosures, or one for every 292 households, last month. This marked a jump of 31 percent over May 2009 and a 1.3 percent decline from April 2010.

Foreclosures are defined as default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions.

There were 322,920 foreclosure filings, or one for every 400 households, in the United States in May. This was a 0.45 percent rise over May 2009 and a 3.3 percent drop from April 2010.

“The numbers in May continued and confirmed the trends we noticed in April -- overall foreclosure activity leveling off while lenders work through the backlog of distressed properties that have built up over the past 20 months,” said James J. Saccacio, RealtyTrac CEO, in a statement. “Defaults and scheduled auctions combined increased by 28 percent from 2007 to 2008 and another 32 percent from 2008 to 2009, creating a build-up of delayed bank repossessions. Lenders appear to be ramping up the pace of completing those forestalled foreclosures even while the inflow of delinquencies into the foreclosure process has slowed.”

The above article appeared in the bizjournals of Atlanta and can be accessed at  http://atlanta.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2010/06/07/daily32.html

PrivoCorp provides contract mortgage processing services to lenders, brokers, net branches across the country.

Bankrate.com : Mortgage rates chug along

According to bankrate.com, mortgage rates have settled into a groove since last Thursday. Yields on mortgage bonds have chugged along at more or less the same level since then, and that implies that mortgage rates haven't moved much, either. Today is the day when Bankrate conducts its weekly rate survey; I predict that it will say that the benchmark 30-year fixed is 4.98 percent this week, up from 4.92 percent last week.

The Mortgage Bankers Association says there aren't many people applying for mortgages to buy homes; most customers are applying to refinance their current loans. Purchase applications are at their lowest level since April 1997, according to the MBA.

It's easy to figure out why home sales are down so much. The home buyer tax credits stole home sales from the future. We might come to regret this policy choice, because we will discover that some homeowners bought a few months too early, with an insufficient financial cushion. Some people will lose their homes because they bought in March instead of saving more money and waiting until the end of the year.

The above article appeared on bankrate.com