Mortgage Updates

Larry King recently invited several real estate professionals onto his show “Larry King Live.” King asked the guests for advice regarding the housing market — some of the responses were concrete, while others were more general.
Some of the the most useful responses?
From real estate expert Barbara Corcoran, on selling a house:
There’s one way you [...]

According to the Charleston Gazette, a new report by federal regulators indicates mortgage fraud rose 35% in the first quarter of this year (compared to the same period last year).
The Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, known as FinCen, on Friday released its first report on mortgage-loan fraud, which is said to be one [...]

“Mortgage rates around the country dipped for a third week in a row, pushing 30-year mortgages to their lowest level since April,” according to an AP article in the Ledger-Enquirer.
This week, 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages fell to 6.55% (down from 6.63 percent last week). The last time rates were this low was the week of [...]

Thinking about a reverse mortgage?
Before you sign that contract, make sure there aren’t any traps.
The Australian Consumers Association recently studied 19 lender contracts. It discovered default clauses that, if breached, could result in a call for the immediate repayment of the entire loan.
Property titles remain in the borrowers’ names and they are [...]

Delinquency rates are on the rise. They jumped “more than 7%, to 4.7% in the fourth quarter of 2005, from the year before,” according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.
Despite this, many lenders aren’t cutting back on exotic mortgages — in fact, they’re “charging ahead on such high-risk loans full tilt.” They claim that cutthroat competition [...]