SO, HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO TERMINALLY ABBROGATE THE CONTRACTUAL RIGHTS OF HOME BUYERS IN AMERICA?
Drum Roll ……. This just in from the NYT and other sources: After months of painstaking talks, government authorities and five of the nation’s biggest banks have agreed to a $26 billion settlement: Ally Financial Inc., Bank of America Corp.,Citigroup Inc., J.P. Morgan […]

Housing is nothing short of Gloom and Doom. Following yesterday’s news out of Zillow of a 0.77% drop in April 2011 home values compared to March 2011, today we get an update from CoreLogic which in turn looks at the latest trends on “underwater” (or negative equity) mortgages in the US. In summary:
 

“10.9 million, or 22.7 percent, of […]

The never ending pipeline of shadow inventory – 1,800,000 homes in foreclosure while another 2,000,000 are underwater by 50 percent. No housing recovery without clearing out shadow inventory and expanding real household wages.
There will be no recovery until the shadow inventory is cleared out. This backlog of properties hangs over any sustainable housing recovery like a dark cloud […]

This is huge news for all of us Real Estate wonks. MERS has just been struck down by a Federal Bankruptcy judge.As reported in NewsUnwrapped – a Blog written by local Baltimorean, Steve Meizlish, with the specific intent of Telling-The-Story-Behind-The-Story — we see what could be the beginnings of the unraveling of the Real Estate infrastructure as we […]

What’s old is new again. Just posted to www.ZeroHedge.com, is a fairly comprehensive and enlightening recap of the recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) report which documents their stress testing of 53 large banking holding companies and published its findings last month.
This report and analysis is not only objective, but it’s consistent with many postings on this Blog. All […]

ALARMINGLY, today we discover that more than 1.2 million households [have been] lost to the recession, according to a report issued this week by the Mortgage Bankers Association that looked at data between 2005 and 2008.
That number doesn’t include information from 2009, when job losses and foreclosures continued to rise. So it’s likely that the […]

 In a word, the residential mortgage picture is: BAD.
As reported by MarketWatch, more than 11.3 million homeowners — nearly one-fourth of all Americans with a mortgage — owe more on their loan (or are “under water”), than their home is now worth, according to a report released February 23, 2010, by FirstAmerican CoreLogic.

More than 10% of […]

We normally would NOT reproduce language from a prospectus filed with the SEC. HOWEVER the following language is culled directly from a very interesting and timely filing made by First Mariner Bank on Tuesday (2.9.10).
It is so related to our recent posts – regarding the collapse of the commercial real estate market and the heavy-weight […]

Here’s what MarylandCommercialTitle.com has been saying for more than two (2) years now. Could this truly be our reality?
Over the next several years, a watchdog group concludes that failed commercial real estate loans could litter American cities with empty stores and office complexes, cause hundreds of bank failures and weaken the economy.
Banks face up to […]

Shadow inventory properties are homes that have not been tallied into official inventory numbers tracked by Realtors and other real estate professionals. They include homes taken back by lenders through foreclosures and similar actions, as well as homes whose owners are at least 90 days delinquent on their mortgage payments.
A variety of measures to keep […]