Fueled by a strange cocktail of legal theories, some Puget Sound-area homeowners facing foreclosure are slapping their lenders with multimillion-dollar “sweat equity” counterclaims and other measures promoted by shadowy consultants.

But the maneuvers may only deepen struggling borrowers’ financial and legal difficulties.

“No reason to waste the money,” said a former Monroe homeowner named Jeff, who paid $4,000 to a firm claiming it could avert foreclosure of the home on which he owed about $650,000.

Full story is available on Seattle Times

A Henderson city councilwoman who has defaulted on her home mortgage is taking harsh criticism from a political opponent who contends her financial problems show she’s ill-suited to handle the public’s money.

Tom Wagner, a City Council candidate, sent out a mailer this week bashing one-term incumbent Gerri Schroder for not making a house payment in six months.

While it’s common for candidates to use their rivals’ financial troubles against them, it does appear to be a new campaign twist to slam an opponent for falling behind on a home loan in the bad economy, a situation in which tens of thousands of Nevadans are mired.

Full story is available on Las Vegas Review Journal

Banks would have to demand at least 20% down payments on mortgages if they wanted to later sell the loans to investors, under a proposal newly endorsed by regulators.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board and Federal Reserve agreed Tuesday to seek comment on a plan to boost lending discipline and define the safest form of loans entirely resalable to investors.

The rule is expected to have little near-term impact on the housing and securitization markets because investors are not yet eager to buy repackaged mortgages. Also, it would not include loans sold to Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac (FMCC), behind about 90% of home mortgages.

Full story is available on Investors.com

Mortgage rates jumped higher for the third straight week as home buyers became skittish about making purchase decisions amid international unrest and doubts about the U.S. economy, higher interest rates according to Freddie Mac. The jump in interest rates on the bench mark 30-year fixed rate loan moved ever closer to 5% at 4.86%, five basis points higher from a week ago.

The rate has been on a three week trend moving higher, jumping five basis points each week for the last three. Rates below 5% are still near the lowest on record, but may have to move much lower in order to entice more home buyers seeking mortgage financing back into the market.

The 15-year fixed rate mortgage also moved five basis points up from last week to 4.09%. The 5-year Treasury indexed hybrid adjustable rate mortgage averaged 3.70% this week from 3.62% last week. The jump higher in rates came as consumer confidence in the U.S. economy waned as the New York Stock Exchange and other financial markets sustain their rocky activity, gaining in value over the last two years until recently when the market took a downturn.

Full story is available on Housing Predictor

The economy is getting better so we’re told, but don’t expect to get a job soon if you’re a Southern California resident.

And if you’re a homeowner in trouble with your mortgage, the US House of Representatives has voted to cut the president’s federal Home Affordable Modification Program.

The House majority Republicans called the program ineffective and said it gave false hope to hundreds of thousands of homeowners who still lost their homes despite the program, something we agree with.

We don’t agree, however, that some type of assistance should not be given to homeowners with troubled mortgages. We did it after all for the banks, which by the way are even bigger today than back when they were “too big to fail.”

Full story is available on EGPNews

House Republicans have passed legislation four times this year killing the Obama administration’s home-loan modification program, with the latest attempt coming just this week. But the bills have had no chance of becoming law, due to opposition in the Democrat-controlled Senate, even though senators admit the program is badly flawed and has not done enough to assist struggling mortgage holders.

Two years ago, Congress gave the Department of the Treasury $50 billion to operate the Home Assistance Modification Program. The administration insisted then that the effort would benefit three million to four million homeowners in danger of losing their American dream.

However, to date only a little more than 600,000 homeowners have received permanent loan modifications, and Treasury officials have spent barely $1 billion of what they were given. Meanwhile, foreclosures continue—225,000 filings in February alone—and home prices are still falling

Full story is available on AllGov

The housing market is currently sending different signals based on the different factors that affect it. This is dependent on the refinance mortgage rates, the housing prices and also the pending sales. Report is currently showing that this is beneficial for buyers but not for the case of the sellers. The latter is mostly to face recession because of this.

There was a decrease in the home price indices being decreased by 2.0% for The 10-city and 3.1% decrease for 20-city. These were both gotten from the January level. Still, there have been an increased in home buyers which is attributed on them maximizing the affordable rates on their part especially in the housing prices and refinance mortgage rates.

Full story is available on Daily Rosetta

Last summer, as President Barack Obama’s premier plan to save millions of Americans from foreclosure foundered, the administration tossed a new life preserver to homeowners.

Officials unveiled a $1 billion program to offer loans to help the jobless pay their mortgages until they could find work again. It was supposed to take effect before the end of the year, but as of today, the government has yet to accept any applications.

“We wait and wait, and they keep saying it’s coming,” said James Tyson, 50, a Philadelphia homeowner who lost his job a year ago.

That could be an epitaph for the administration’s broader foreclosure prevention effort, as tens of billions of dollars remain unspent and banks have denied hundreds of thousands of homeowners. Now the existence of the main program, the Home Assistance Modification Program, is in doubt.

Full story is available on Mercury News

Q. Home prices keep falling and we’ve been waiting to buy our first home. We’ve saved up enough for about a 15 percent down payment. But now we’re beginning to wonder if we should buy at all — or keep renting.

A. Well, you’re right about home prices. The most recent Case-Shiller Home Price Index shows that prices fell 3.1 percent, year over year, compared with January 2010. The 20-city composite index, as of January, has fallen 31.8 percent from its peak in July 2006.

In fact, there’s talk of a “double-dip” housing recession, which would be defined by the Case-Shiller 20-city price index hitting a new low — even lower than the bottom made in April 2009. As of January, the 20-city index was only 1.1 percent above that low point.

Full story is available on Sun Times

Just over two years ago, homeowners Shawn and Karen Murphy decided to invest in a condo property in downtown Toronto. In February, they signed a deal for a townhouse vacation property in Blue Mountain.

“The first was for investment purposes, the other for our family vacations,” says Shawn Murphy.

“With the condo we saw it as a great opportunity to buy a rental property, since the rent would pay our monthly mortgage payments. We started looking for a vacation property a couple of years ago, but weren’t sure how viable it would be with our banker. It turns out it wasn’t a problem.”