The federal government gave many potential home buyers a big incentive to become homeowners earlier this year with an $8,000 tax credit for qualified home purchases through Nov. 30, 2009. Now the Federal Housing Administration has sweetened the deal. Instead of waiting to file their taxes to receive the $8,000 credit, qualifying buyers who use FHA loans can access the funds immediately through short-term bridge loans.

Under the FHA program, buyers can add the amount of their tax credit to their 3.5 percent down payment, which is required for FHA-insured mortgages; use the money to help cover closing costs; or buy down their interest rate. This new measure should meaningfully impact home sales and values.

* Full story available on The Battle Creek Enquirer

Banks need to provide more information about their mortgage lending so regulators and the public can flag risks and potential racism in the housing market, experts say.

Amid the ongoing financial crisis, community advocates and the Obama administration are calling for more data to be supplied under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The additional data would help detect patterns of racial discrimination that may exist. It would also give better insight on types of lending that could lead to another mortgage meltdown.

The HMDA data supplied by banks, for example, doesn’t currently include borrowers’ credit scores, the down payment amount and other details that would give a clearer picture of a lenders’ decisions to make or deny a particular loan. In the past, the banking industry has resisted providing more data, saying the requirements were burdensome and could violate borrowers’ privacy.

* Full story available on The Charlotte Observer

Homeowners don’t need to be in the housing market to take advantage of government incentives to stimulate the economy. They may be able to claim tax credits for making improvements to their current home.

The federal government is offering tax credits at 30 percent of the cost, up to $1,500, for home renovation projects that improve energy efficiency. Work must be done during 2009 or 2010, and the credits apply to the homeowner’s existing principal residence.

* Full story available on The Florida Today

Analysts greeted the tiny May increase in existing-home sales with minimal cheer. I guess they were looking for something more dramatic.

In fact, they didn’t understand the meaning of the little uptick.

It was a miracle. It is miraculous that any homes are sold in America.

The same generous folks who lent so much money during the boom – the same people who inspired the phrase NINJA loan, for No Income, No Job, no Assets – are now exercising so much diligence that it is a miracle any home sales close.

* Full story available on The Dallas News

As the credit spigot dried up in 2008, blacks and Hispanics were more likely to be denied mortgage loans than whites, an Observer analysis of the latest national mortgage data found.

And the rejection gap is growing between whites and minorities, causing some community activists to worry about recurring discrimination in lending.

Nearly one out of two African Americans who sought to buy a single-family home or refinance a loan were denied, compared with about one in four for whites, according to the analysis of top U.S. lenders. Hispanic loan applications were denied nearly as often as those submitted by blacks.

* Full story available on The Charlotte Observer

It’s hard to sell your home when it is surrounded by foreclosures.

That’s the trouble Middletown resident Calvin Harpe is facing after he put his home on the market this year. The value has dropped below what he owes because of the number of foreclosures on his street and neighborhood. Even using President Obama’s program to help homeowners refinance has not helped, he said, since it requires he pay down his mortgage to within 105 percent of the appraisal price.

“(Obama’s) plan makes no sense to me because of that. The plan says that people that owe more than what their house is worth may refinance. But they can’t because it will not appraise,” he said.

* Full story available on The Oxford Press

Mortgage lenders are getting in on the incentive game home builders started playing a year ago as the recession eats away at the already ailing housing market.

Home builders were offering new cars, vacations and flat-screen TVs to get buyers into homes. Now, several banks have come out with programs designed to get home buying moving again, including cash toward down payments, security in case you lose your job, or lower interest rates.

Many programs are aimed at getting the first-time buyer — who also can take advantage of a new $8,000 federal tax credit — into a home.

* Full story available on The State

he parent owner of Waffle House restaurants, Waffle House Inc. of Norcross, Ga., plans to buy its largest franchisee, Nashville-based SouthEast Waffles, out of bankruptcy.

In a filing Monday in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Nashville, the company, under a new corporate entity called Newco, plans to pay about $18.6 million to the franchisee’s creditors and take control of its 105 restaurants in four states.

* Full story available on The Forbes

Remember that infamous meeting last October at the Treasury Department, the one where then-Secretary Henry Paulson locked the chief executives of the nation’s nine largest financial institutions in a room, and wouldn’t let them out until they agreed to accept billions of dollars in government bailout money — whether they wanted it or not?

O.K., that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But I was reminded of that meeting on Thursday night when I was shown a letter that the administration had just sent out calling for yet another big meeting at Treasury with yet another sector of the financial industry. Signed by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Shaun Donovan, the housing and urban development secretary, the letter demanded that representatives from the top 25 mortgage servicers assemble in Washington on July 28. It is likely to be every bit as painful for them as that Paulson meeting last October was for the bank C.E.O.’s.

* Full story available on The NY Times

U.S. banks are likely to begin signing contracts as soon as this month that would let second mortgages and other home-equity debt be reworked under a government-subsidized program, a Treasury official said.

Contracts may be signed this month or in early August, the official, who asked not to be identified discussing private talks, said in an e-mail yesterday. On April 28, when provisions for the expansion of President Barack Obama’s $75 billion “Home Affordable” plan were announced, officials said the second-lien program would be up and running in about a month.

* Full story available on The Bloomberg