First Central Mortgage Funding: Mortgage News

[at MarketWatch] - When Karol Enferadi finally received a contract for her home-loan modification, she wrote “rejected” on it in large letters and mailed it back to Wells Fargo.

[at MarketWatch] - Private mortgage insurers have the right to file deficiency judgments. And they do where it is legal and the situation warrants.

[at MarketWatch] - Fixed-rate mortgage rates continue their fall to record lows this week, following the release of second-quarter GDP data, Freddie Mac reports.

In some parts of the country, it doesn’t take much to become a mortgage-loan officer. Not a license, not much training. That's changing.

If a couple takes out a reverse loan, but then one spouse dies and the survivor remarries, it's time to give the lender a call. Even though reverse mortgages are nonrecourse loans, there are reasons to consider refinancing into a new loan.

A couple inherits a house -- and its underwater mortgage. What are their options now?

The interest rates charged on fixed-rate mortgages inch down to a sixth straight weekly record low, according to Freddie Mac’s latest survey of conforming mortgage rates.

The IRS doled out more than $27 million in fraudulent claims for the home buyers’ tax credit on returns for 2008, including claims by prisoners serving life sentences, a Treasury Department report says.

The portion of homeowners who brought money to the table for a cash-in refinance in the second quarter tied for the third-highest level since Freddie Mac started tracking refinancing trends in 1985, the housing agency said Wednesday.

After years of hearing how home prices are plummeting and foreclosures are mounting, consumers want to feel hopeful about the housing market -- but maybe they’re being too optimistic.

Cash-out refinancing gained popularity when home values were rising fast, and homeowners wanted to tap their home equity to put money in their wallet. Today, some borrowers are doing the reverse, bringing cash to the closing table when they refinance their home loan.

Loan modifications through the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program tripled in the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter, according to data that covers loans held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said Tuesday.

A foreclosure reduces the value of a home by an average 27% -- a much higher discount than occurs with other types of forced sales, according to a recent study that will be published in the American Economic Review.

A new consumer financial protection agency aimed at protecting Americans on a wide range of personal-finance transactions seems to be a likely result of Congress’s current effort to overhaul the banking industry and prevent future economic crises -- but will the agency succeed?

For starters, as long as you are current on your payments, lenders cannot demand that you pay down your balance, even if you are fully drawn. All lenders have to abide by their contracts with borrowers, and home-equity lenders are no different.

More help is on the way for unemployed homeowners struggling to make their mortgage payments, thanks to funding tucked into the financial reform legislation signed by President Obama on Wednesday.

Should you co-sign on your college student's credit card application? That depends.

With the job market in dire straits, household incomes declining and foreclosures dragging down home values, the housing market may take years to recover, according to the annual State of the Nation’s Housing report released Monday by Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

With no federal tax credit to entice buyers, today’s home sellers have to get even more serious about making a deal.

The jumbo sector is unwinding a bit, but it will be a long, slow process for the market to return to any semblance of normalcy, whatever that is.