Looming Deficit Impedes Federal Housing Agency
Housing officials say the agency will face a deficit for the first time in its 74-year history, starting in the fiscal year that begins in October. And they blame a rapidly growing and increasingly troubled sector of the F.H.A.’s mortgage portfolio, known as the seller-financed down payment loan program, which has suffered from high delinquency and foreclosure rates in recent years... In 2000, such mortgages made up less than 2 percent of F.H.A.-insured loans, officials say. By 2007, statistics show, they accounted for 35 percent of F.H.A. loans...“These types of loans have pushed F.H.A. to the brink of insolvency,”  Alphonso R. Jackson, the housing secretary, told senators recently. “They are costing hard-working Americans their homes.” Mr. Jackson announced last week that he would resign his post as of April 18...But HUD is not the only agency to raise concerns about seller down payment loans. In 2005, the Government Accountability Office raised concerns that were echoed by the Internal Revenue Service a year later.

One in 10 home loans is under water: Economy.com
One-tenth of U.S. homeowners hold mortgages that are larger than the worth of their homes, Moody's Economy.com said on Friday.Nearly 8.8 million homeowners, or 10.3 percent, are in over their heads, its chief economist, Mark Zandi, estimates...

Homebuilder Freeze all PAC (Money) to Elected Officials
  See Video News Report

Realty Check Poll after 1 hour

Should builders get money from the government for the housing crisis?   * 155 responses  Results after 1 hour
	No 31%
	Yes 4.5%
	No one should get any money 64%

Realty Check Poll after 20 hours

Should builders get money from the government for the housing crisis?   * 438 responses No 38% Yes 4.8% No one should get any money 58% Not a scientific survey

Realty Check Poll After 24 Hours Should builders get money from the government for the housing crisis?   * 569 responses No 39% Yes 4.7% No one should get any money 56% Not a scientific survey.

Realty Check Poll February 19, 2008

Should builders get money from the government for the housing crisis?   * 631 responses
	No 41%
	Yes 4.9%
	No one should get any money 55%

Project Lifeline provides 30 day breather for loan mods
Loan servicers and lenders who handle about nine out of 10 subprime loans have agreed to participate in an initiative to help delinquent borrowers by putting foreclosure proceedings on hold for up to 30 days to evaluate alternatives. The Project Lifeline initiative, targeted at borrowers who are 90 days or more behind on their payments, was announced by six major lenders on Feb. 12 (see Inman News story).

If Everyone’s Finger-Pointing, Who’s to Blame?
A wave of lawsuits is beginning to wash over the troubled mortgage market and the rest of the financial world. Homeowners are suing mortgage lenders. Mortgage lenders are suing Wall Street banks. Wall Street banks are suing loan specialists. And investors are suing everyone...Some of the loans have defaulted, and a trustee’s report on the pool of loans packaged and underwritten by UBS, the Swiss investment bank, shows that losses on some defaulted mortgages are as high as 100 percent. As of November, about 27 percent of the loans in the pool were either delinquent 60 days or more, in foreclosure or had resulted in a repossessed home.

State lawmakers wrestle with abusive lending
In the three months since Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller launched a foreclosure hotline, nearly 6,000 Iowans have called for help. The calls come to the Iowa Mediation Service, which Miller hopes will be able to negotiate with lenders to help borrowers keep their homes. "We're trying to do it on a mass basis," Miller says. Foreclosure rates for homes purchased using non-standard, high-interest loans have reached historic highs in Iowa and around the USA.

FBI: Housing scams more than double
Federal mortgage fraud convictions have more than doubled in the past year, and the FBI expects a growth in foreclosure scams as the crisis over substandard, high-interest home loans escalates. Foreclosure rates for these mortgages, known as subprime loans, are at historic highs, according to surveys by the Mortgage Bankers Association and government records.

Foreclosure: There goes the neighborhood
Some of these neighborhoods are becoming foreclosure disaster zones. They’re places where three out of the four houses you find for sale are in foreclosure. That’s causing fear that these neighborhoods are already starting to fall apart.

America's Housing Troubles Won't End with 2007
"The bottom has nowhere near been reached," said William Wheaton, an economist with MIT's Center for Real Estate. Wheaton said there was a great deal of overbuilding, driven in part by speculators. The result, he said, is that there are now more than 1 million extra homes sitting on the market. That's even after home-building had been cut by 50 percent and massive layoffs. Economy.com says when it's all added up, there will be 750,000 foreclosures in 2007. Looking forward, he said, "I think we're in store for at least a million lost properties in '08." "The average household size is a couple [to] three people," Zandi said, "so you're talking 3 million people actually lose their homes."

When a short sale isn't a short sale
What is there to gain by marketing a property as a short sale that isn't a short sale? Serious buyers are a rare breed in some market areas these days, and many of them are looking for bargains. Short sales can in some cases sell for a lower amount than comparable properties that are not similarly distressed, as there is urgency by sellers to get out from under the properties and by lenders that wish to avoid costs associated with foreclosure.