Demand for Apartments is Driving the Multifamily Mortgage Market

Per Niche Report ... rather than looking for single-family residences, more Americans are opting for rental deals, and thus the mortgage market for multifamily properties like apartment buildings is heating up.

The rate of American home ownership has fallen to levels not seen since another financial bubble became manifest on Wall Street. In November of 1998, the dot-com bubble was in full swing with the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of the Globe.com, an online social network that failed to attain the stature of Facebook. That IPO made history by allowing lucky investors to realize the most one-day gains ever, and it only took one year for it to collapse. Interest rates at that time were considerably low at that time, and thus home ownership began to edge up in 1998. Mortgage interest rates are even lower today, and yet rates of home ownership are just as low as they were then.

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Details of the $25B mortgage settlement emerge

As per Niche report.com , the U.S. Department of Justice has filed the respective settlement agreements that the five major mortgage lenders recently signed in relation to their questionable foreclosure processing practices. The agreements amount to a total $26 billion monetary settlement that the banks will have to disburse in the form of cash payments and mortgage principal reductions.

The financial entities involved are: Ally Financial (formerly GMAC), Bank of America, Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo. The agreements are highly detailed and complex, as evidenced by the fact that they are more than 300 pages each. Although the settlement agreements were signed earlier this year, the full details and the mechanisms the banks must adopt to compensate their mortgage borrowers are just beginning to emerge.This settlement is historic in the sense that it is the highest sum obtained from private enterprises by a joint state and federal effort. For the homeowners who were wrongly foreclosed upon and evicted from their properties, the settlement brings some relief.

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MBA: Mortgage Applications Decrease in Weekly Survey

According to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending March 9, 2012.

The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 2.4 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 1.8 percent compared with the previous week. The Refinance Index decreased 4.1 percent from the previous week to its lowest level since January 6, 2012. This is the fourth consecutive weekly decline in the Refinance Index. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 4.4 percent from one week earlier to its highest level since January 13, 2012. The unadjusted Purchase Index increased 6.0 percent compared with the previous week and was 0.4 percent lower than the same week one year ago. For more information on this check the link http://goo.gl/wz3JL

President Clinton Offers a Fix for Underwater Mortgages

According to a report in National Mortgage News, Former U.S. President Bill Clinton outlined his plan to help troubled mortgage borrowers before a standing-room-only crowd packed into an auditorium the size of a football field at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center during the National Retail Federation's Annual Convention & Expo this week.

"This economic crisis is about way more than economics," Clinton said. "It has gone to the core of people's sense of who they are, what they are worth and how they get through life with meaning."

Clinton's plan for resolving the current crisis is to immediately lower principal and interest rates for underwater borrowers to match current valuations and market rates. In exchange, the homeowner would agree to pay the bank a portion of the money earned from eventually selling the home in a recovered market.

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