ResCap suing brokers who originated bad mortgage loans
By DAVID PHELPS, Star Tribune
August 9, 2008
A division of ResCap, the embattled mortgage-finance arm of GMAC Financial Services, is fighting back in the home-lending credit crisis.
The Bloomington-based investor has filed more than a dozen federal lawsuits in Minnesota against mortgage companies, claiming that they failed to do adequate [...]
As Wolfgang Münchau says in today’s FT:
If this had been a mere financial crisis, it would be over by now. The fact that we are suffering its fourth wave tells us there might be something at work other than merely financial euphoria and bad regulation.
This is true, even if you don’t buy Münchau’s assertion that [...]
(From MiamiHerald.com)
BY TAMARA HOLMES
During the height of the real estate boom, it was not only possible to buy a home with little cash and less-than-ideal credit, but with soaring real estate prices, it was easy to refinance as well.As a result, many homeowners cashed in on lower interest rates and pulled equity out of their [...]
At the same time, the Senate is pushing ahead with sweeping legislation on housing while facing questions about why some of its members received below-market-rate mortgages from Countrywide.
As first reported by Daniel Golden on Portfolio.com, the primary author of the Senate bill, Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, as well as Senator Kent Conrad, Democrat of [...]
(From LATimes.com opinion article)
The state Assembly’s response to the sub-prime mortgage catastrophe experienced its own meltdown in the Senate Banking, Finance and Insurance Committee last week. In a twist on the cliche, only the weak bills survived. The most ambitious Assembly bill, AB 1830, was tamed in advance by sponsor Ted Lieu (D-Torrance) to answer [...]
(From HousingWire.com….)
The FHA’s more lenient underwriting standards appear to have allowed it to overcome its historic shortcomings — a cumbersome and bureaucratic documentation process, and stiff lender requirements (for example, brokers complain that the requirement to provide costly audited financials steers all but the large mortgage brokerage firms away from FHA programs). FHA modernization proposals, [...]
(From NakedCapitalism.com)
The Wall Street Journal reports that criminal charges against the managers of the failed Bear Stearns hedge funds, Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, are imminent. The Journal also indicates there are no charges pending against Bear Stearns or any other Bear executives.
Pray tell, why not?
The funds were clearly under the supervision of Bear Stearns; [...]
SACRAMENTO — As the worst foreclosure crisis since the Great Depression drags down the California economy, the Legislature is making only limited progress this year on proposals for sweeping changes in the home mortgage industry.
Amid fanfare this winter, lawmakers held televised news conferences and introduced an unprecedented number of bills that would more heavily regulate [...]
With the housing boom gone bust, lenders are now peddling reverse mortgages to cash-hungry boomers who don’t want to sell in the storm.
Deal-hungry mortgage lenders are targeting aging baby boomers to fuel a spike in reverse mortgages that topped all of 2007’s deals in just the first four months of this year.
Between January and April, [...]
(From WSJ Online….)
June 4, 2008
Massachusetts’ attorney general filed a lawsuit alleging that subprime lender Option One Mortgage Corp. and its parent company, H&R Block Inc., discriminated against black and Latino borrowers.
The suit, filed by Attorney General Martha Coakley in Suffolk Superior Court, also alleges that Option One engaged in “unfair and deceptive lending practices” by [...]
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