Obama May Announce New Mortgage Assistance Plan

I have heard a few speculative rumors that there is a new plan coming from the government. This plan is suppose to focus on foreclosure alternatives such as  short sale deals and  or a deed in lieu of foreclosure.

The only official word I have heard, came from the treasury. The secretary of financial  stability parade or something, the guys lat name is Allison, I think (I will update this info soon so I won’t sound so dumb, sorry).

Anyways it seems as if this new foreclosure prevention plan is in response to the many failed trial modifications that are going back into default. The goal of this plan from what I can gather is to  make it easier and cheaper to for lenders to collect the collateral tat secured all the mortgage debt, aka your home. This way banks are able to save big on the very expensive foreclosure process.

Hmmmmmmm….

(Switching Gears on this Post)

To tell everyone the truth I am starting to get a bit scared. This thing is really takings its toll on the housing, mortgage and banking infrastructure. This is not even the really scary part.

Credit Card Debt.

See housing or rather mortgage debt is backed by what I consider a solid asset. Obviously the market for housing is a little under the weather or perhaps even under water. but just the same it is real. There exists a physical object of tremendous value behind every mortgage. there may very well be more mortgage then object, but just the same, there is an object. Also the lenders put up real money for the sale of the home. Where these mortgage loans go bad and disappear there is…

Real Estate.

My anxiety and fear is not over the real estate market. It is over the credit card debt and the continued funding of our own dooms day machine in the shape of large financial institutions that have structured this whole mess. The same can be said for the autos.

Consider GM

How does management of a company believe they can continue paying there old workers for 20-40 years after they stop working and stop creating value. How? What were they thinking? What were we thinking? What are we doing?

Back to credit card debt…

Credit card debt not only is unsecured, most of it by now is pretend. There is no value to back it up. Much of it was not worked for, then due to high interest and a sick economy people started to default which leads to higher interest, fees and more fake money.

The way I see it you can print all the money you want, as long as you add value behind every dollar that you print. We as Americans create money and wealth. Not stimulus plans.  Not undeserved mortgage refinance and modification programs that won’t work. Not huge bailouts to those who structured this mess.

This mess may now be on the verge of disaster.

To big to fail? Evidently not. At least not America. Not Rome. Not every other world super power.

The Simple Picture

The people must build and create wealth. We are the economy. We must stop our foreclosure.

Otherwise we are all in for some change.

I guess it is kinda ironic.

I guess it is getting a little scary.

 

Please Explain where I have gone wrong…

Someone needs to shut me up.

Housing Sales Up almost 10%

Home Sales were up almost 10% according to NAR data released thursday or friday i can not recall (will try to update). This information would imply that almost approx. 1/2-2/3 million units were sold. WOW.

The spike of existing home sales is attributed to the tax credit deadline and of course the ever cheaper home prices that stems from the surplus of foreclosures and the notion that there is a lot more coming despite the Obama administrations best efforts to put a plug in the rapidly draining and jobless economy and financial crisis that we are currently in. If you keep up with my blog here then you are aware that the 500,000 make home affordable loan modification goal and deadline set for November 1st by President Obama  was reached and better yet the mortgage lending community really stepped up to bat and completed this task by October 6 .

The Housing Sales surge has really aded fuel to the fire of the 8,000 dollar new home buyer tax credit. This is the new hot topic in congress.

I think that the credit will be extended for another month to three months and then we will be slowly withdrawn in terms of the level of benefits.

Do You Think The Tax Credit Will Be Extended? Modified??

I would really like to hear from you guys!

Lenders Surpass the Obama Loan Modification Goals

It seems as if a congratulations and a pat on the back is due to the mortgage lending industry, President Obama and his administration, the Making Home Affordable Plan and those involved, and of course the American Homeowner.

Why?

The Obama Loan Modification program known as the Make Home Affordable Loan Modification and also known as HAMP or Home Affordable Modification Program has met the quantitative goal of  500,000 mortgage modification offers to those homeowners who qualify.

The goal was met early this month of October. A good three weeks or so before the Obama Loan Modification Goal Deadline of November First.

This is great news for the American Homeowner, Mortgage Lenders and Banks, President Obama, The Economy, and America as a whole.

Despite this important milestone of 500,000 Make Home Affordable Loan Modification offers to struggling Homeowners around the country, the experts on the matter warn that there is still a long way to go. Not to mention we must remember that these are only offers and the Homeowners still have to agree and send in the necessary documentation.

None the less let us not take away from this good news. It seems as if we have some momentum going for this great country of ours so lets not spoil it but at the same time lets not be foolish. How can any of us forget the hype about the Hope For Homeowners Program.

I am going to post on this matter again in a few days so I can further research this developing loan modification success story. I will be sure to include some nice graphs and displays so that we will be able to get are heads around the situation. Be sure to check back!

Obama Gives 35 Billion to Housing Agencies

Housing Agencies, also known as HFAs, will receive $ 35,000,000,000.00 dollars in Federal Government aid from President Obama and his Administration.

What are Housing Agencies?

Housing Agencies which operate on the local and state government level are operated with the purpose of funding mortgages for low to middle class families who are looking for a home to buy or trying to buy a home. These agencies are typically able to finance borrowers at 1/2 to 1 percentage point lower than a commercial mortgage lender would lend for.

Why is Obama giving 35 billion in aid to local and state governments for housing agencies funding?

The financial aid is to support the ongoing efforts of funding mortgages for low to middle-class home buyers. These funds given to the housing agency will help ease the strain off of Federal government agencies such as Fannie and Freddie who continue to struggle to find financing on the open markets.

Housing Agencies play a large roll in mortgage funding. Below are some stats on the mortgage loan financing activities of state and local housing agencies.

Quick Mortgage Loan Funding Stats for Housing Agencies:

• Lending rates are typically 1/2% – 1% point lower than commercial mortgages
• Fund approximately 100,000 Home Mortgage Loans a year
• For year 2007:
  • $17 Billion in Home Loans
  • 127,000 Mortgages Funded
• Approximately 1 out of 5 mortgages outstanding (1st liens only) are funded through a Housing Agency. This is 4.6% or 2.6 million Home Loans

Lets hope that this 35 billion dollars of financial aid can help continue the forward path of economic recovery we seem to be on currently.

Financial News: Fed Extends Mortgage Securities Purchase Bailout Program

Financial News

The Federal Reserve has decided to extend the Mortgage – Purchase Program. This program is designed as a tool to keep interest rates low by allowing the federal reserve to act as a buyer of mortgage backed securities that are packaged and sold by banks and investment firms. The program will now be prolonged un till mid winter or so and will be phased out gradually.

This decision is based on the Federal Reserves acknowledgement and concern for the collective consumers of America low tolerance for spending. Their hope is that with folks able to keep and others obtain a lower mortgage payment consumer spending will have more room to grow.

Let us hope this works.

Do It Yourself Loan Modification and Mortgage Workout

There is a great resource coming soon to the web for Homeowners wha are having mortgage trouble and in need of assistance obtaining a loan modification or other form of mortgage workout.

HopeNHousing.Org is working on a do it yourself loan modification and mortgage workout resource that is or will be available online free to all who need it.

The DIY Mortgage workout center should be equiped with all the financial worksheets, applications, and tools one needs to obtain a loan modification or mortgage workout. All these tools should be available to the public at no charge. Even lender specific documents will be available!

I hope HopeNHousing.Org will be able have this project up and running very soon so that the millions of Homeowners who need to stop foreclosurewill be able to access it before it is too late.

Obama Loan Modification Performance and Expectation Forecast Update

The mortgage assistance program that helps Homeowners obtain a loan modification known as the Making Home Affordable Plan has been improving in terms of usage. Out of the millions of eligible borrowers almost 600 thousand of them have been offered a mortgage modification that will help the homeowner make home affordable and avoid foreclosure.

According to the treasury almost 20% of the eligible homeowners have been given a offer and 361,000 trial modifications have been set in place. By November 1^st there are expected to be 500,000 active Obama loan modifications.

Though these numbers on restructured mortgage agreements obtained through the make home affordable loan modification program are good it is still a long and complicated process for a homeowner to obtain one. We all need to keep in mind that 80% of the Homeowners who qualify are still left hanging. Mean while the level of foreclosures are rising.

ADP – Unemployment Numbers

Financial News

The ADP unemployment numbers for the non-farm payrolls has come in for the month of August.

The figure is just shy of 300,000 jobs taken off the payroll of US businesses.

Details of monthly job losses:

• Small Businesses dropped approximately 120,000. This is the most positive figure or the smallest decline since 9/2008
• Mid Size Businesses lowered their payrolls by 115,000
• Large Companies lost 60,000 employees

Your first reaction to this number may be WTF if you are not regularly following this monthly number on unemployment. But many of the experts say that this figure is not all that bad in the reality of our financial outlook. Apparently it is getting better!

I don’t Know… call me stupid but if there are 300 million Americans… then one out of 300 people, regardless of if you even have a job, just lost one. If that number kept up then one could guesstimate that if you have a job there is a one out of twenty chance that you are going to lose your job by this time next year. That ratio of course assumes we don’t have any sort of upturn in employment or the economy for that matter. Both of those notions are thought to be untrue by most experts. That is a good thing.

It seems that the way to stimulate the economy is to add value to the economy. For example, building an alternate route to ease congestion on an over congested route would add value to the economy.

• Add jobs from construction
• Add production hours from society
• Add entrepreneur opportunity in terms of businesses that work well by major commuting routes
• Add cash to economy, it seems to me you can print money as a government if you add value to back it up. The new route adds value so finance it on the assumption of the new value.

I would like to here what you guys have to say on the matter.

http://YoungFinanceGuy-benweb.blogspot.com

Warren Buffet is Back to Making Money

Financial News

Numbers On The Street: Berkshire Hathaway Regains Profitability

The Oracle of Omaha is at it again back in the land of profitability. Warren Buffet and the rest of Berkshire Hathaway enjoyed a healthy 2^nd quarter gain of $2,123.00 per share or a total net income of 3.3 billion dollars. Not bad especially when looking back at last quarters loss of 1.5 billion dollars. Much of the gain is due to the vast stock portfolio of the holding giant.

Cash For Clunkers

The Cash for Clunkers Program has come to a close after a very short but very successful and busy run as what has been named the most successful stimulus program put in to use to date by President Obama.

The  Cash For Clunkers Program gave a much needed boost to both new car sales and consumer spending. The three billion dollar budget bought around 20 or so billion dollars of new sales activity and about three quarters of a million new cars actually sold. This of course helped many different aspects of the economy such as jobs and the credit markets. Plus don’t forget the stimulus program is great for the enviorment  and will even add a downward pressure to the cost of gas.

Let us hope for homeowners that the making home affordable plan will catch on half as much as the cash for clunkers program has.

Numbers On The Street: Unemployment Data Lifts Hope

Financial News

July Unemployment Rate slips downward allowing hope to regain it’s path upward on the street

In June the jobless rate in the US stood at 9.5% and has fallen in July to 9.4%. Though this is barely a !% difference month to month and the unemployment rate is still uncomfortably high this marks the first month downward in quite a while and the trend has been steadily upward since the recession began in December 2007. Though this data brings a growing hope that a recovery is in deed in progress the experts are cautioning not to get to bullish too soon. They say we still have some downside left.

For instance President Obama has said that he expects unemployment to reach 10% . Also we should note that a alarming 6.7 million jobs have been lost since December 2007.

But no matter how you slice it the market seems to be doing much better and the DOW is now around 9500!

The Recent Economic Data Shows a Fickle Economy

There has been a big load of data pouring in as of late and the market has responded positively. Though one certainty is that there is no certainty.

 

First lets take a look at the good news. One the market is above 9000 or rather the Dow Jones industrial average is above 9000. This is great news for the street.

The rise of the stock market is due to the speculation that the worst is behind us. But just as there are bulls looking at the current housing and earning data in a positive light there to are the bears who see the data in well… a much different light.

Some say that the lending activity is non existent pointing out that the banks are mierely refinancing debt instead of lending new money. Also many point out that the video game market is hurting which was originally thought to be practically recession proof.

And ofcourse the bears are always pointing out the monumental debt that the Government has issued sending the national tab through the roof.

For now however the bulls or the optimist seem to be wining out as the market has been on quite a winning streak.