Housing Crisis, Mortgage | featured news

The insurer AIG is suing Bank of America Corp to recover more than $10 billion of losses from a "massive fraud" on mortgage debt, deepening the morass of litigation faced by the largest U.S. bank.

It is far too easy to say that minorities have only themselves to blame for their wealth decline because they bought homes they couldn’t afford. That argument would let so many off the hook. It would excuse the government for its monumental failure to tame predatory lenders. And it would absolve the lenders who came up with exotic mortgages that should never have been pitched ubiquitously, especially not to financially fragile minority borrowers. But blaming the victim is what we do so well in America.

Many critics of the Obama administration's mortgage loan-modification program say it won't work because it doesn't do enough to address "negative equity," the plight of people who owe more on their home loans than the current value of those properties. Without equity in their homes, these critics say, borrowers have little incentive to keep paying and are apt to walk away as soon as things get tough, if not before.

After a slow start, the Obama administration's mortgage relief program has reached one in five eligible homeowners, a government report says.

The Obama administration’s effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosure may not achieve its goal of helping 3 million to 4 million borrowers, a government watchdog group says.

U.S. home loans failed at a record pace in July despite ongoing federal and state programs to avoid foreclosures, which have severely strained housing and the economy.

Almost half of U.S. homeowners with a mortgage are likely to owe more than their properties are worth before the housing recession ends, Deutsche Bank AG said.

U.S. officials are weighing a plan to let borrowers who have fallen behind on mortgage payments avoid eviction by renting their home instead, sources familiar with the administration's thinking said on Tuesday.

If nothing else, the legal maneuver will buy them some breathing room. But it also will destroy their credit rating, and it may not even be necessary.

To most people, bankruptcy is a four-letter word.

Mortgage rates fell this week, with the average rate on 15-year fixed-rate mortgages dropping back below 5%, according to Freddie Mac's (FRE) weekly survey of mortgage rates released Thursday.