Free Republic

Julie Hamp (pictured above), Toyota Motor Corporation's recently promoted global chief communications officer and top female executive, has found herself behind bars after allegedly running afoul of Japan's strict prescription drug laws. Tokyo police claim that Oxycodone was sent to her from the US and discovered by Japanese customs. Hamp was arrested at her hotel on June 18.

According to Zillow, the U.S. negative equity rate fell at the fastest pace ever in Q3 2013. That is good news … if you own a mortgage or a home. But not great news if you are one of America’s growing renters. Leading the recovery, due to house price recovery, is California. And second is Nebraska? In general, the West which was so hammered by the housing bubble burst is recovering nicely. zillownegeqmap11222013 Here is a map of counties regarding negative equity. Red is “bad”, blue is “good”. You can see that the West and select counties around the nation...

President Obama is in Phoenix today to discuss fixing the housing market. It is reminiscent of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speeches in the 1930 on how to fix the housing market. The federal government began its response to the housing crisis in 1932, with the enactment of the Federal Home Loan Bank Act (the Bank Act). The Bank Act created the Federal Home Loan Bank System and the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBank Board) as its regulator. The federal government also created the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and Fannie Mae. And the creation...

Obama had lofty goals of helping 4 million Americans keep their homes with his Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP). Here are some quick facts:   HAMP modified 1.2 million mortgages (70% less than the target) 306,000 re-defaults Another 88,000 at risk The re-default rate is an alarming 30% The re-default rate of those in since 2009 is 46% CNNMoney has additional details in Watchdog: Borrowers in Obama housing program re-defaulting.   Borrowers who received help through the government's main foreclosure prevention program are re-defaulting on their mortgages at alarming rates, a federal watchdog said in a report released Wednesday.  Nearly 1.2 million...

I bet you were going to say Phoenix, Las Vegas, Riverside or Tampa had the highest HAMP re-default rates. But it’s Danville, Illinois. According to the Quarterly Report to Congress (dated July 24, 2013) of the Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), The leading metropolitan areas with the highest redefault rates on modified mortgages were highest is Danville IL at 50% re-default rate, Sumter SC at 44% and Rocky Mount NC at 40%. redfULYS See the SIGTARP report here: July_24_2013_Report_to_Congress Here is a table of Sand State (AZ, NV, CA, FL) re-default rates....

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose … Struggling homeowners who received loan modifications under a federal government program are defaulting on their mortgages at an alarming rate, according to a watchdog report released Wednesday.The report from the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said the Treasury Department’s Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, has failed to ensure that mortgage reductions are sustainable.Home loans modified in the third and fourth quarters of 2009 are now defaulting at a rate of 46 percent and 39 percent, respectively. As of the end of March, more than 312,000 homeowners...

It is amazing that the Presidential debate was devoid of a housing discussion. Since we are experiencing the worst economic recovery since 1882, I thought housing and the economy would have been a ripe topic for discussion. There was good news for housing starts this morning. Privately-owned housing starts in September were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 872,000. This is 15.0 percent above the revised August estimate of 758,000 and is 34.8 percent above the September 2011 rate of 647,000. WE ARE FINALLY BACK TO MID RECESSION LEVELS OF HOUSING STARTS! So, we are over three years beyond...

There was an interesting article on Bloomberg and the Washington Post with the tantalizing title, “Why Obama’s plan failed to fix America’s housing crisis.” The article features Steven Nesmith (who wanted a bolder effort) and me (who said we shouldn’t have intervened at all). “They were well-intended, but they were not bold enough,” said Steven Nesmith, a former vice president at loan servicer Ocwen Financial Corp. who served as an assistant secretary in the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the administration of President George W. Bush. “They should have gone bigger and bolder with a robust plan to...

In a nutshell, the Obama Administration wants to expand the already existing the Home Affordable Modification Program (or HAMP) to forgive debt to those who are “underwater.” The Administration would require mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage insurance giants in the DC area, to forgive mortgage debt. Bear in mind that the housing and credit bubble were put into motion by President Clinton and HUD Secretaries Henry Cisneros and Andrew Cuomo with their National Homeownership Strategy to encourage households to buy housing and accumulate debt. Here is the NHS document that was removed from HUD’s website: nhsdream1...

In a nutshell, the Obama Administration wants to expand the already existing the Home Affordable Modification Program (or HAMP) to forgive debt to those who are “underwater.” The Administration would require mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage insurance giants in the DC area, to forgive mortgage debt. Bear in mind that the housing and credit bubble were put into motion by President Clinton and HUD Secretaries Henry Cisneros and Andrew Cuomo with their National Homeownership Strategy to encourage households to buy housing and accumulate debt. Here is the NHS document that was removed from HUD’s website: nhsdream1...

PANAMA CITY BEACH — Lindsay Hall took out a $200,000 loan in 2005 on her paid-off beach house with the understanding that her $600 monthly Social Security check would cover the mortgage payments. When her interest rate jumped more than a year ago, it raised her mortgage payments to $1,500. At that point, Hall started the fight to save her home. “I want to say I did my best to fight for the American dream,” said Hall, 70. Hall has negotiated with her loan servicer, IndyMac Mortgage Services, to modify her loan payments multiple times. Each time she negotiates payments...

Back in March 2009, the Obama administration unveiled the Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, a program for helping delinquent borrowers save their homes from foreclosure - a problem that got worse again in reports released just last week. The goal of HAMP was to “help 3 to 4 million homeowners by 2012.” This phrase should have read “help or hurt” because hurt is exactly what has happened to hundreds of thousands of homeowners who have attempted to use HAMP to save their homes. How is it possible that a program for providing mortgage modifications could hurt homeowners? To understand...

Former President Bill Clinton is coming to Chicago in January to campaign for mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel. Before serving in President Barack Obama's White House and representing the North Side of Chicago in Congress, Emanuel worked in Clinton's administration as a senior adviser for policy and strategy. Clinton is scheduled to headline a public event that highlights Emanuel's role in passing a crime bill....

Interesting story here... CourtHouseNews (via Denninger): A La Jolla man can keep his home for now, after a federal judge granted his motion for a temporary restraining order blocking Washington Mutual and JP Morgan from foreclosing on his house because the banks misled him into defaulting on his mortgage. Kaveh Khast claimed the banks instructed him to stop making his mortgage payments so he could qualify for a loan modification. A Washington Mutual representative confirmed receipt of the documents, but did not contact Khast within two months as promised. After learning JP Morgan Chase had acquired Washington Mutual, Khast contacted...

  Call it a paradox. The U.S. economy officially has been out of recession for 15 months. The stock market enjoyed a record-high September; durable goods orders are up; and consumer spending is growing. Yet homeowners continue to lose their properties at a frequency not seen since the Great Depression. And this is despite - and possibly to some extent, because of - an emergency federal program in place for the past year and a half designed to stave off foreclosures. Call it a consumer bailout. And don't expect it to end soon. Business journalists have an old shibboleth: Housing...

More than half – 682,659 homeowners –of the more than 1.3 million borrowers in the Obama Administration’s mortgage modification effort have dropped out of the program as the foreclosure crisis shows few signs of abating. The Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) update for August, released today, shows that 51 percent of the 1,334,117 borrowers who started trial periods of reduced monthly payments have cancelled out of the 16-month-old program. In July, the dropout rate stood at 48 percent.

Thanks to the folks over at National Review for spilling the beans on this travesty. In a piece titled Racial Voyeurism we learn that our famously post racial President just can't move beyond matters of race. Even though most Americans don't care about race, our current government can only be described as "obsessed" with it. The latest fiasco is the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) which requires lenders to identify the race of the applicant even if the applicant refuses to provide the information. The handbook for the HAMP program specifically states;  “If a borrower declines to provide GMD, the...

[snip] The problem starts with a skewed financial incentive at the heart of HAMP. The government paid Fannie bonuses for trial modifications that lasted three months, but apparently provided no incentive to move those homeowners into permanent modifications. Under pressure to show that they could turn a profit after the massive bailouts of 2008 and continuing bailouts in 2009, Fannie Mae execs focused like a laser on earning the bonus payments:

DULUTH, Ga. - A couple who lost their home to foreclosure and spent hours locked in a SWAT standoff with police when they refused to leave, talked about the situation Thursday. The Grabers said they were living their version of the American dream. The Grabers said they owned their home for more than a decade when Howard Graber suffered a massive stroke. The Grabers said that's when everything changed. On Wednesday, Gwinnett County deputies went to the Graber's Davenport Park Lane home to serve an eviction notice after the bank had foreclosed on the property. It turned into a four...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Treasury Department on Friday acknowledged that the number of homeowners in trouble again despite getting help from the administration's signature mortgage aid program was higher than earlier estimates. Treasury officials blamed the error on mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae, which acts as the program administrator for President Barack Obama's $50 billion Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), which helps subsidize new terms for borrowers struggling to keep up with their mortgage payments. Treasury said about 4,764 borrowers, who had obtained a permanent HAMP modification, were behind by at least 90 days, while about 53,041 borrowers were behind...